LITTLE  LEADERS 


UNIT.  OF  CALIF.  LIBRARY.  LOS  ANOFI  ** 


LITTLE  LEADERS 


BY 

WILLIAM  MORTON  PAYNE 


CHICAGO 

WAY  fcf  WILLIAMS 

1895 


COPYRIGHT 

BY  WAY  AND  WILLIAMS 
MDCCCXCV 


TO    MY    OLD    FRIEND    AND    FELLOW-WORKER 
FRANCIS  FISHER  BROWNE 

WHO    HAS    DONE    MORE    THAN   ANY   OTHER 

MAN   TO    PROMOTE    THE    INTERESTS 

OF    LITERATURE    IN 

CHICAGO 


2132234 


PREFACE. 

THE  contents  of  this  little  book  consist  of  a  series  of 
papers  reprinted  from  « The  Dial,'  in  which  periodical, 
scattered  through  the  past  three  years,  they  first  did  duty 
as  editorial  articles.  The  title  now  given  to  the  collec- 
tion is  thus  accounted  for,  as  well  as  the  use  of  the  plural 
pronoun,  which  it  seemed  best  to  retain.  The  papers 
make  no  pretence  of  doing  more  than  touch  the  skirts  and 
fringes  of  the  great  subjects  with  which  they  are  con- 
cerned, and  whatever  readers  they  may  reach  are  asked 
to  bear  this  fact  indulgently  in  mind.  They  are  repro- 
duced substantially  as  they  appeared,  with  but  trifling 
alterations.  Two  of  them,  it  should  be  added,  have 
been  incorporated  into  the  introduction  of  the  book 
'  English  in  American  Universities,'  edited  by  their  au- 
thor, and  very  recently  published. 

CHICAGO,  November  i,  1895. 


CONTENTS. 

LITERATURE  AND  CRITICISM. 

SONNET  —  Ej  Blot  til  Lyst.  pAG£ 

LITERATURE  ON  THE  STAGE 13 

THE  IBSEN  LEGEND 23 

THE  CULT  IN  LITERATURE 31 

THE  LITERARY  WEST  . 40 

THE  WRITER  AND  His  HIRE 49 

THE  CRITIC  AND  His  TASK 56 

TOUCHSTONES  OF  CRITICISM 6x 

ANONYMITY  IN  LITERARY  CRITICISM      ...  71 

POETRY  AS  CRITICISM  OF  LITERATURE    ...  81 

THE  NEGLECTED  ART  OF  TRANSLATION      .     .  90 

EDUCATION. 

SONNET —  The  Higher  Aim. 

A  FEW  WORDS  ABOUT  EDUCATION     ....  101 

THE  APPROACH  TO  LITERATURE 109 

THE  TEACHING  OF  LITERATURE 117 

DEMOCRACY  AND  EDUCATION 127 

THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN  SPEECH  ....  136 

THE  USE  AND  ABUSE  OF  DIALECT      ....  146 


x.  CONTENTS— Continued. 

PAGE 

READING  AND  EDUCATION 155 

SUMMER  READING 163 

THE  SUMMER  SCHOOL 169 

AN  ENDOWED  NEWSPAPER 178 

IN  MEMORIAM. 
SONNET  —  Conservation. 

ALFRED  TENNYSON 189 

ERNEST  RENAN 200 

HIPPOLYTE  ADOLPHE  TAINE 209 

GUSTAV  FREYTAG 220 

JOHN  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS ,  429 

CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI 237 

JOHN  TYNDALL 246 

THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY 255 

OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 264 

WILLIAM  FREDERICK  POOLE 270 


LITERATURE  AND  CRITICISM 


'  EJ  BLOT  TIL  LYST.' 

[These  words,  meaning  'Not  for  pleasure  only,*  are 
inscribed  above  the  stage  of  the  Royal  Theatre  at  Copen- 
hagen.] 

NOT  merely  for  our  pleasure,  but  to  purge 
The  soul  from  baseness,  from  ignoble  fear, 
And  all  the  passions  that  make  dim  the  clear 

Calm  vision  of  the  world ;  our  feet  to  urge 

On  to  ideal  far-set  goals ;  to  merge 

Our  being  with  the  heart  of  things ;  brought 

near 
The  springs  of  life,  to  make  us  see  and  hear 

And  feel  its  swelling  and  pulsating  surge :  — 

Such,  Thespian  art  divine,  thy  nobler  aim  ; 
For  this  the  tale  of  CEdipus  was  told, 
Of  frenzied  Lear,  Harpagon's  greed  of  gold; — 

And,  knowing  this,  how  must  we  view  with  shame 
Thy  low  estate,  and  hear  the  plaudits  loud 
That  mark  thee  now  but  pander  to  the  crowd ! 


LITERATURE  ON  THE  STAGE. 

THERE  has  been  of  late,  both  in  England  and 
America,  one  of  the  periodically  recurrent  out- 
bursts of  criticism  and  discussion  of  the  English- 
speaking  stage,  its  present  degradation,  and  its 
possible  future  redemption.  Attention  has  been 
called,  in  all  possible  tones  of  indignation,  to  the 
old  familiar  facts ;  to  the  evils  of  the  '  star '  sys- 
tem, to  the  alarming  prominence  of  the  spectac- 
ular element  in  dramatic  production,  and  to  the 
insistence  of  the  public  upon  being  amused,  at 
whatever  cost  of  the  artistic  proprieties.  That  all 
these  evils  exist,  and  many  more,  is  evident  to  the 
most  casual  observer.  The  theatrical  records  of 
London,  New  York,  and  Chicago,  alike  give  evi- 
dence of  a  noble  art  degenerated  into  a  mere 
amusement,  and  of  the  almost  complete  severance 
of  literature  from  the  stage.  But  talking  about 
these  evils  is  not  likely  to  prove  effective  in  re- 
moving them.  The  talking  will  be  done  by  a 
few  earnest  people,  and  the  unthinking  masses 


14  Little  Leaders 

will  give,  as  before,  the  sanction  of  their  support 
to  the  dramatic  monstrosities  that  chiefly  occupy 
our  stage.  Discussion  of  the  subject  but  sup- 
plies, after  all,  a  new  illustration  of  the  homely 
saying  that  la  watched  pot  never  boils';  in  other 
words,  the  kingdom  of  true  dramatic  art,  like  a 
certain  other  kingdom,  cometh  not  with  observ- 
ation. The  great  periods  of  the  art,  when  liter- 
ture  securely  trod  the  stage,  did  not  result  from 
a  deliberate  and  reasoned  conclusion  that  such  art 
was  a  desirable  possession,  but  were  the  sponta- 
neous product  of  a  heightened  national  conscious- 
ness seeking  for  adequate  expression.  Such  ex- 
pression was  found  in  the  ages  and  countries  of 
Pericles  and  of  Louis  Quatorze,  in  the  period  of 
Spanish  history  that  culminated  with  the  glories 
of  Calderon  and  Lope  de  Vega,  and  at  the  time 
of  that  vast  expansion  of  the  English  spirit  which 
produced  Marlowe  and  Webster  and  Shakespeare. 
We  may  well  wonder  what  manner  of  men  they 
were  who  flocked  to  their  rude  theatres  in  '  the 
spacious  times  of  great  Elizabeth,'  and  shared, 
with  no  adventitious  spectacular  allurements  to 
serve  as  a  fillip,  in  the  pure  intellectual  delight 
offered  by  c  The  Tempest '  or  l  A  Midsummer 


Literature  and  Criticism         15 

Night's  Dream/  As  Mr.  Symonds  says, c  There 
remains  always  something  inscrutable  in  the  spon- 
taneous efforts  of  a  nation  finely  touched  to  a  fine 
issue.' 

The  stage  of  to-day  certainly  does  not  give  us, 
in  England  and  America,  any  indication  of 'a  na- 
tion finely  touched  to  a  fine  issue.'  The  play- 
wright, not  the  poet,  the  contriver  of  puppets,  not 
the  creator  of  characters,  occupies  the  higher  plane 
of  our  existing  dramatic  art,  while  the  lower  plane 
is  hopelessly  given  over  to  the  buffoon,  who  acts 
after  his  kind.  The  situation  is  much  better  upon 
the  continent  of  Europe,  for  there,  at  least,  the 
stage  has  an  unbroken  and  dignified  tradition.  If 
it  can  boast  few  living  writers  of  great  distinction, 
it  still  preserves  its  character  as  a  school  of  con- 
scientious acting,  of  correct  diction,  and  of  accu- 
rate enunciation.  As  a  conservator  of  the  national 
speech  the  Theatre  Fran^ais  is  as  important  and 
influential  a  body  as  the  Academic  Franchise, 
while  a  similar  function  is  fulfilled  by  the  theatres 
of  many  German  cities  and  of  the  Scandinavian 
capitals.  To  realize  what  this  means,  we  have 
only  to  imagine  the  derision  that  would  greet  the 
proposal  to  decide  some  disputed  question  of  En- 


1 6  Little  Leaders 

glish  style  or  pronunciation  by  reference  to  the 
practise  of  the  stage  in  any  English  or  American 
city.  The  explanation  of  this  difference  is,  of 
course,  largely  political.  The  chief  European 
governments  have  always  held  the  stage  to  be  an 
educational  institution,  and,  as  such,  a  legitimate 
object  of  government  support.  The  noble  motto 
of  the  Danish  national  theatre  has  been  made  the 
working  rule  of  the  government-aided  European 
stage.  The  Theatre  Francais  permits  no  week 
to  pass  without  performance  of  some  work  by 
Corneille,  Racine,  or  Moliere  ;  the  court  theatres 
of  Austria  and  Germany  as  frequently  produce 
the  plays  of  Lessing  and  Schiller,  of  Goethe  and 
Shakespeare.  But  in  no  theatre  of  the  English- 
speaking  world  is  the  presentation  of  Shakespear- 
ian drama  thus  made  a  matter  of  fixed  weekly  or 
even  monthly  recurrence.  Germany  pays  more 
reverence  than  we  do  to  our  own  dramatic  poet, 
to  the  chief  glory  of  all  dramatic  literature. 

One  might  suppose  that  this  neglect  of  a  great 
art  would  have  long  since  led  to  the  disappearance 
of  the  drama  from  our  literature.  But  the  essen- 
tial vitality  of  the  dramatic  form,  and  the  inherent 
fitness  of  our  English  speech  to  assume  that  mode 


Literature  and  Criticism        17 

of  expression,  have  given  us,  in  spite  of  all  dis- 
couragements, an  almost  unbroken  succession  of 
noble  dramatic  poems.  Although  our  century 
refuses  to  witness  stage  productions  of  the  great 
works  of  English  dramatic  literature,  and  although 
they  are  denied  the  support  of  even  the  reading 
public,  they  are  still  produced  in  numbers,  for  the 
instinct  of  the  poet  well  knows  the  value  of  dra- 
matic expression,  and  he  will  not  abandon  it,  how- 
ever the  public  may  scorn  the  product  of  his 
labors.  Such  poems  as  4  The  Cenci '  of  Shelley 
and  the  c  Count  Julian '  of  Landor,  or  the  plays 
of  Browning  and  Mr.  Swinburne,  had  they  been 
written  by  Frenchmen  or  Germans,  would  not 
have  had  to  wait  long  before  taking  their  proper 
places  in  the  classic  repertory  of  the  stage.  And 
the  greatest  poet  of  our  own  age,  had  he  not  been 
English,  would  have  obtained  more  than  a  grudg- 
ing recognition,  as  fitted  for  stage  purposes,  of  but 
one  or  two  of  the  magnificent  series  of  his  histor- 
ical and  romantic  dramas.  Had  a  German  poet 
written  *  Harold '  and  *  Becket,'  or  a  French 
poet  written  4  The  Foresters,'  these  works  would 
have  had  more  than  a  cold  succes  cTestime,  for 
they  would  have  reached  a  public  quick  to  recog- 


1 8  Little  Leaders 

nize  literary  excellence  in  the  drama,  and  prompt 
to  express  its  approval  of  noble  workmanship.  In 
excellent  dramatic  work  of  a  rank  lower  than  the 
first,  our  nineteenth  century  literature  is  also  rich, 
and  to  a  degree  which  few  readers  and  no  mere 
theatre-goers  suspect.  Such  plays  as  Sergeant 
Talfourd's  '  Ion '  and  Dean  Milman's  l  Fazio,' 
both  of  which  once  had  a  precarious  tenure  of  the 
stage,  well  deserve  to  be  revived ;  the  dramatic 
poems  of  Sir  Henry  Taylor,  Richard  Hengist 
Home,  and  Westland  Marston,are  infinitely  more 
deserving  of  attention  than  nine-tenths  of  the  plays 
actually  produced  upon  our  stage.  But  they  would 
be  caviare  to  the  general  audience,  hopelessly  dull 
in  appreciation  of  style,  and  trained  to  prefer  buf- 
foonery to  comedy,  melodrama  to  tragedy,  or,  at 
the  very  best,  sentiment  to  passion. 

The  almost  complete  severance  of  literature 
from  the  English  stage  is  clearly  enough  shown 
by  the  fact  that  the  dramatic  works  of  Tennyson 
have  never  succeeded  in  gaining  a  foothold  there. 
If  a  still  more  striking  illustration  is  wished,  it 
can  be  furnished  by  the  experience  of  the  Shelley 
Society  in  its  attempts  to  produce  c  The  Cenci.' 
According  to  English  law,  only  licensed  plays 


Literature  and  Criticism         19 

may  be  publicly  produced.  An  unlicensed  play 
may  be  given  private  performance,  a  term  which 
means  that  no  money  shall  be  taken  at  the  doors 
of  the  theatre,  but  which  is  otherwise  so  conven- 
iently vague  that  any  such  performance,  arranged 
in  the  best  of  faith,  may  be  undertaken  only  at 
considerable  risk  of  violating  the  law  in  some  un- 
suspected way.  4The  Cenci,'  we  must  add,  the 
greatest  English  dramatic  poem  of  the  century, 
has  been  steadily  refused  a  license  by  the  English 
authorities,  although  several  applications  to  legal- 
ize its  performance  have  been  made.  In  1886, 
the  Shelley  Society  gave  a  private  performance  of 
4  The  Cenci '  in  a  London  theatre,  in  presence 
of  perhaps  the  most  distinguished  audience  that 
recent  years  have  seen  collected  for  any  purpose 
whatever.  But  the  outraged  dignity  of  the  cen- 
sorship was  prompt  to  act,  and  the  manager  of 
the  theatre  in  question  was  allowed  to  continue  his 
lease  only  on  condition  of  never  thereafter  lend- 
ing his  stage  for  the  production  of  an  unlicensed 
play.  In  the  centennial  year  of  the  birth  of  Shel- 
ley, the  Society  wished  to  commemorate  the  oc- 
casion by  a  repetition  of  the  l  Cenci '  perform- 
ance, but  found  it  impossible  either  to  get  the 


20  Little  Leaders 

play  licensed  for  public  representation,  or  to  find 
a  manager  willing  to  risk  lending  his  theatre  for 
the  private  performance  contemplated.  So  the 
plan  was  abandoned,  and  a  fresh  victory  scored 
for  the  hosts  of  the  Philistine. 

When  matters  reach  such  a  pass  as  this,  it  cer- 
tainly behooves  the  friends  of  literature  to  see  if 
something  cannot  be  done  to  rehabilitate  the  stage. 
It  is  not  a  little  significant  that  an  Independent 
Theatre  should  have  been  organized  in  London 
a  few  years  ago,  and  that  some  of  the  more 
thoughtful  literary  men  of  this  country  should,  at 
about  the  same  time,  have  united  to  establish  in 
New  York  the  Theatre  of  Arts  and  Letters. 
The  still  older  Theatre  Libre  of  Paris,  and  the 
more  recent  Theatre  de  1'  CEuvre,  might  at  first 
seem  to  deserve  mention  in  this  category,  but  cer- 
tainly have  not  resulted  from  a  similar  necessity, 
for  French  dramatic  art  needs  no  such  encour- 
agement. But  the  London  and  New  York  or- 
ganizations adopted  what  is  probably  the  best 
method,  in  a  country  the  genius  of  whose  institu- 
tions hardly  admits  of  a  stage  subsidized  by  the 
government,  for  the  furtherance  of  an  important 
and  neglected  cause.  The  untimely  collapse  of 


Literature  and  Criticism         21 

the  Theatre  of  Arts  and  Letters  seems  to  have 
resulted  rather  from  bad  management  than  from 
any  fault  of  the  underlying  principle.  Its  pro- 
gramme, and  the  names  of  the  men  who  stood 
sponsors  for  its  plans,  promised  a  serious  aim,  and 
the  employment  of  methods  consistent  with  both 
the  dignity  of  literature  and  the  best  dramatic  tra- 
ditions. The  most  valuable  work  done  by  the 
Independent  Theatre  of  London  was  the  produc- 
tion of  several  of  Dr.  Ibsen's  dramas  of  modern 
society,  which  certainly  represent  a  tendency  in 
dramatic  art  deserving  of  encouragement.  Its 
production  of  Webster's  l  Duchess  of  Malfy  ' 
was  another  step  in  the  right  direction,  reminding 
us  that  the  century  which  has  partly  neglected 
Shakespeare  has  totally  neglected  the  other  men 
of  that  great  race  of  Elizabethans  above  whose 
level  it  required  the  stature  of  a  Shakespeare  to 
tower.  The  later  organization  known  as  the 
Elizabethan  Stage  Society,  whose  object  is  the 
presentation  of  Elizabethan  plays  under  sixteenth 
century  conditions,  has  also  undertaken  a  work  of 
great  educational  importance.  Last  of  all,  we 
may  mention  the  recent  performance,  under  the 
auspices  of  the  English  Department  of  Harvard 


22  Little  Leaders 

University,  of  Jonson's  c  Silent  Woman.'  The 
success  of  this  experiment  was  such  as  to  encour- 
age other  colleges  to  similar  undertakings.  Both 
in  England  and  America,  we  have  for  many  years 
had  the  l  Greek  Play'  and  the  'Latin  Play,' 
as  occasional  features  of  college  work ;  is  not  the 
4  English  Play '  quite  as  deserving  of  attention, 
even  from  a  strictly  educational  standpoint  ? 


Literature  and  Criticism        23 


THE  IBSEN  LEGEND. 

ONE  of  the  most  curious  chapters  of  literary 
history  is  that  which  deals  with  the  greatest  of 
Roman  poets  as  he  appeared  to  the  imagination 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  Master  Virgil  of  me- 
diaevalism  stands  out  as  a  vivid  enough  figure, 
exerting  a  marked  influence  upon  the  current  of 
mediaeval  thought ;  yet  how  unlike  the  personality 
of  the  Mantuan  as  he  appears  to  us,  with  our 
fuller  knowledge  of  classical  times,  and  the  truer 
intellectual  perspective  of  our  view.  It  was  a 
singular  refraction,  indeed,  that  shaped  the  out- 
lines of  the  poet  into  the  distorted  figure  of  the 
wizard,  a  strange  limitation  of  outlook  that  in  so 
literal  a  sense  made  of  his  name  a  word  with  which 
to  conjure,  while  blind  to  his  genius  and  its  true 
significance.  Books  have  their  fates,  runs  the 
Latin  saying,  and  presumably  their  authors  no 
less.  But  never  was  the  fate  of  bookman  more 
ironical  than  that  of  the  poet  of  the  lJEneid'  and 
the  c  Fourth  Eclogue,'  envisaged,  a  thousand 


24  Little  Leaders 

years  after  his  death,  as  an  allegorist  and  a  won- 
der-worker. 

It  is  a  far  cry,  in  more  ways  than  one,  from 
Virgil  to  Dr.  Ibsen,  and  there  is  but  a  single  fact 
that  could  lead  us  even  for  a  moment  to  couple 
their  names.  That  fact  is  the  prevalence  and 
seemingly  continued  growth,  at  least  in  England 
and  America,  of  an  Ibsen  legend,  grotesquely 
divergent  from  the  truth,  and  calculated  to  make 
of  the  Norwegian  poet  and  dramatist  a  figure  as 
unlike  his  real  self  as  Master  Virgil  was  unlike 
the  poet  who  chiefly  made  glorious  the  Augustan 
Age.  Our  newspapers,  and  even  some  of  our 
serious  organs  of  opinion,  afford  frequent  indica- 
tions that  the  popular  consciousness  holds  Dr. 
Ibsen  to  be  the  poet  of  gloom,  of  the  morbid 
aspects  of  character,  of  the  seamy  side  of  life  and 
the  unsavory  among  human  relations.  A  Ger- 
man sensationalist,  long  discredited,  but  whose 
latest  work  has  recently  been  getting  much  atten- 
tion, finds  in  Dr.  Ibsen  a  conspicuous  illustration 
of  what  he  calls  Entartung.  A  typical  news- 
paper article  just  now  under  our  eye,  an  article  of 
the  better  sort  and  evidently  written  in  all  seri- 
ousness, calls  him  l  grim '  and  '  egotistical,'  speaks 


Literature  and  Criticism        25 

of  his  '  icy  indifference,'  his  l  dank  philosophy,' 
and  his  l  intolerable  pessimism.'  No  one  who 
does  much  reading  in  current  criticism  can  have 
failed  more  than  once  to  come  across  even  the 
suggestion  that  he  deliberately  panders  to  the 
lower  instincts  of  human  nature,  that  he  revels 
in  what  is  revolting  and  unclean. 

Anyone  who  has  read  the  writings  of  Dr.  Ib- 
son,  and  who  knows  something  of  the  aims  and 
ideals  that  they  embody,  rubs  his  eyes  in  wonder- 
ment when  he  meets  with  such  epithets  and  opin- 
ions as  have  just  been  mentioned.  But  when 
amazement  at  the  misconception  has  a  little 
abated,  he  is  apt  to  ask  himself  if  there  is  any 
possible  way  of  accounting  for  the  origin  of  opin- 
ions so  grotesque,  unless,  indeed,  he  summarily 
sets  them  down  as  adding  another  to  the  many 
existing  illustrations  of  the  essential  irrationality 
of  the  majority  of  minds.  The  last  count  of  the 
indictment  above  outlined  may  safely  be  left  to 
shift  for  itself.  There  is  no  shred  of  evidence 
for  it,  and  no  sane  mind  could  for  a  moment 
seriously  entertain  the  suggestion.  Nor  is  it  with- 
out reluctance  that  we  so  far  consider  the  poet's 
'  icy  indifference '  as  to  recall  the  infinite  tender- 


26  Little  Leaders 

ness  of  l  Brand '  and  '  Peer  Gynt,'  or  illustrate 
his  l  dank  philosophy '  by  the  passionate  idealism 
of l  Love's  Comedy '  and  l  Emperor  and  Galilean.' 
The  reader  is  to  be  pitied,  indeed,  who  is  not 
stirred  to  the  depths  of  his  soul  by  the  agonies 
of  Brand  as  child  and  wife  are  taken  from  him 
one  after  the  other,  or  by  that  vision  of  the  c  third 
kingdom  '  which,  in  the  story  of  Julian,  casts  its 
mystical  glamour  over  the  last  struggle  of  dying 
paganism,  and  which  might  have  been  inspired 
by  the  choruses  of  Shelley's  4  Hellas.' 

The  last  of  these  illustrations  leads  us  to  the 
subject  upon  which  more  than  a  word  or  a  refer- 
ence is  needed.  Of  all  the  charges  commonly 
made  against  Dr.  Ibsen,  that  of  pessimism  is 
probably  the  most  persistent.  This  is  not  sur- 
prising when  we  consider  the  ignorant  way  in 
which  that  term  is  bandied  about  by  most  people, 
yet  here,  if  ever,  the  accusation  calls  for  an  ener- 
getic protest.  Pessimism  is  both  a  mood  and  a 
philosophical  doctrine.  Whatever  standing  it  has, 
considered  in  its  latter  aspect,  it  owes  to  the  au- 
thority of  Schopenhauer,  who,  by  logic  convinc- 
ing at  least  to  himself,  thought  he  had  demon- 
strated the  soul  of  things  to  be  evil,  believed 


Literature  and  Criticism        27 

irremediable  suffering  to  lie  at  the  root  of  con- 
scious existence.  To  this  doctrine  the  whole  of 
Dr.  Ibsen's  work  is  tacitly  but  resolutely  opposed. 
He  never  presents  to  us  the  gloomy  side  of  life 
without  suggesting  the  possibility  of  something 
better,  rarely  without  indicating  the  way  out  of 
what  seems  an  impasse  to  the  soul  of  little  faith. 
So  far  from  preaching  evil  as  irremediable,  he  con- 
stantly ascribes  it  to  lack  of  knowledge,  infirmity 
of  vision,  and  weakness  of  will.  If  there  is  any 
one  trait  dominant  above  all  others  throughout 
his  writings,  it  is  the  persistent  note  of  an  ideal- 
ism unshaken  by 

'  The  absurdity  of  men, 
Their  vaunts,  their  feats,' 

an  idealism  as  absolutely  opposed  as  anything  well 
can  be  to  the  philosophical  doctrine  of  pessimism. 
If  Dr.  Ibsen  is  to  be  styled  a  pessimist  in  this 
sense,  it  must  be  in  the  company  of  all  the  satir- 
ists, ancient  and  modern,  who  have  scourged  the 
vices  of  mankind,  and  all  the  moralists  who  have 
discerned  the  good  life  and  sought  to  bring  about 
its  realization  in  fact  no  less  than  in  dream. 

Of  pessimism  as  a  mood  it  may  be  said  that 
Dr.  Ibsen  exhibits  it  as  it  has  been  exhibited  by 


28  Little  Leaders 

greater  men  than  he,  from  Homer  to  Tennyson, 
by  a  large  proportion,  in  fact,  of  the  greatest  poets 
that  have  ever  lived.  This  merely  means  that  he 
does  not,  like  such  men  as  Browning  and  Emer- 
son, deliberately  exclude  from  his  view  a  large 
share  of  the  facts  of  human  life,  that  he  is  not 
content  to  build  for  himself  a  fool's  paradise  and 
dwell  therein.  He  is  not  to  be  deluded  by 

*  The  barren  optimistic  sophistries 
Of  comfortable  moles,' 

and  endeavors,  according  to  the  light  that  is  in 
him,  to  see  life  steadily  and  see  it  whole.  Like 
all  writers  of  the  second  or  third  rank,  he  has  his 
limitations,  and  his  vision  is  defective;  but  to 
describe  his  prevalent  mood  as  pessimistic,  or 
even  as  cynical,  is  grossly  to  pervert  the  truth. 

The  principal  reasons  for  the  current  miscon- 
ception of  Dr.  Ibsen's  fundamental  attitude  to- 
wards life  may  be  briefly  set  forth.  In  the  first 
place,  much  of  his  work  is  satirical,  and  this  fact, 
combined  with  his  power  of  expressing  the  white 
heat  of  indignation,  naturally  makes  many  people 
think  that  only  one  at  heart  a  cynic  could  find  so 
much  to  condemn  in  the  conduct  and  the  ideals 
of  his  fellow-men.  In  the  second  place,  his  work 


Literature  and  Criticism        29 

is  nearly  all  dramatic  in  form,  and  dramatists 
always  suffer  from  a  more  or  less  unconscious 
identification  with  the  characters  of  their  own 
creation,  however  objectively  conceived.  Last 
of  all,  and  most  important  as  far  as  the  English- 
speaking  public  is  concerned,  he  unfortunately 
first  became  known,  and  is  still  chiefly  known, 
by  means  of  a  group  of  his  least  characteristic 
and  enduring  works.  Most  people  get  their  whole 
notion  of  him  from  a  group  of  three  or  four  plays 
which  deal  with  extremely  narrow  and  specific 
social  problems,  which  are  utterly  inadequate  to 
convey  his  essential  message,  and  which  embody 
no  suggestion  of  the  high  poetic  energy  with 
which  his  really  great  work  is  charged.  It  is  not 
altogether  surprising  that  the  c  Ibsen  legend ' 
should  find  credence  with  readers  who  know  only 
4  A  Doll  Home,'  l  Ghosts,'  '  Hedda  Gabler,'  and 
1  Solness.'  To  such,  and  to  all  who  would  know 
what  Dr.  Ibsen  really  stands  for,  we  proffer  the 
advice  to  read  c  Brand  '  and  4  Peer  Gynt,'  those 
masterpieces  of  robust  social  philosophy  and  high 
ethical  aim.  Their  invigorating  moral  atmos- 
phere has  the  tonic  quality  of  which  our  flabby 
civilization  is  most  in  need ;  their  lofty  idealism 


30  Little  Leaders 

may  well  put  to  shame  our  opportunism,  our  half- 
heartedness,  and  all  the  paltry  conventionalities 
by  which  our  lives  are  misshapen.  And  we  ven- 
ture to  say  that  whoever  once  takes  those  works 
to  heart  will  hardly  thereafter  describe  their  au- 
thor as  a  pessimist,  or  talk  glibly  of  his  4  icy  in- 
difference '  and  his  c  dank  philosophy.'  For  such 
readers,  at  least,  the  4  Ibsen  legend '  will  be  at 
once  consigned  to  the  limbo  to  which  grown-up 
men  and  women  relegate  the  nursery  tales  and 
pious  fables  that  were  literally  accepted  in  child- 
hood, but  that  cannot  impose  upon  the  rational- 
ized adult  intelligence. 


Literature  and  Criticism        31 


THE  CULT  IN  LITERATURE. 

THE  great  poets  are  all  dead  now,  and  appear- 
ances indicate  that  the  twentieth  century  will  be- 
gin its  course  undominated  by  any  commanding 
figure  bequeathed  to  it  from  the  literature  of  the 
nineteenth.  No  Goethe  will  loom  above  that 
new  horizon  as  in  the  early  dawn  of  the  present 
century  ;  no  Scott  is  likely  to  brighten  the  morn- 
ing clouds  of  the  new  era  with  the  radiance  of  his 
genius.  We  cannot,  of  course,  make  any  such 
predictions  with  absolute  confidence  that  the  fu- 
ture will  justify  them,  for  the  individual  manifes- 
tations of  genius  are  as  incalculable  as  are  the 
flashings  out  of  new  stars,  or  the  appearance 
within  the  solar  system  of  unfamiliar  cometary 
visitors ;  but  we  cannot,  on  the  other  hand,  set 
aside  the  manifest  lesson  of  literary  history,  the 
lesson  that  all  great  creative  periods  must  end ; 
that,  viewing  the  whole  course  of  thought,  such 
periods  are  but  few  and  far  apart  in  the  annals  of 
mankind.  And,  however  ingeniously  theories  of 


32  Little  Leaders 

environment  and  ripeness  for  intellectual  activity 
may  explain  the  creative  epochs  of  the  past,  no 
such  theory  is  likely  to  receive  formulation  suffi- 
ciently precise  to  make  it  an  accepted  organon  for 
the  uses  of  forecast. 

The  creative  period  of  German  literature 
would  have  ended  abruptly  with  the  death  of 
Goethe  had  not  the  genius  of  Heine  given  it  fitful 
renewal  of  life  for  another  quarter-century.  In 
France,  the  modern  creative  period  was  clearly 
over  when  Hugo  died.  And  in  our  own  litera- 
ture, it  seems  almost  equally  clear  that  the  death 
of  Tennyson  has  closed  the  Victorian  age  of  let- 
ters, an  age  prolonged  beyond  the  limits  of  most 
such  periods  of  intellectual  expansion,  and  one 
that,  if  our  assumption  be  just,  has  4  made  a  good 
end.' 

What  may  be  expected  to  follow  the  period 
thus  terminated  ?  Whatever  the  literature  to 
whose  history  we  turn,  we  receive  the  same  an- 
swer. After  the  creative  age  comes  the  age  of 
reflection,  the  age  of  interpretation  and  analysis, 
of  grammatical  and  rhetorical  subtleties,  of  form- 
ulations and  classifications,  of  scientific  and  imi- 
tative work.  It  was  so  with  Greece  and  Rome, 


Literature  and  Criticism        33 

with  fifteenth  century  Italy,  with  seventeenth  cen- 
tury France  and  Spain,  with  post -Elizabethan 
England  and  post-Goethean  Germany.  That  it 
will  be  so  with  the  coming  age,  for  France  and 
the  English-speaking  nations,  is  a  proposition  at 
least  as  reasonable  as  many  historical  inductions 
that  pass  unquestioned. 

But  if  we  are  passing  into  such  an  age  we  need 
not  look  upon  it  altogether  with  dismay.  Those 
who  live  in  such  an  age  are  far  from  conscious 
that  theirs  is  a  period  of  decadence.  Intellectual 
activity  seems  to  be  heightened  rather  than  de- 
pressed. Works  of  all  sorts  are  produced  and 
find  no  lack  of  readers.  The  Alexandrians 
thought  the  '  Argonautica '  quite  as  good  a  poem 
as  the  c  Odyssey,'  and  the  Florentines  were  doubt- 
less perfectly  sincere  in  their  admiration  of  Pol- 
iziano.  For  those  whom  the  Zeitgeist  does  not 
deceive,  there  remain  for  study  and  enjoyment 
the  great  works  of  the  past,  and  there  are  enough 
of  these  for  the  lifelong  contentment  of  any  ra- 
tional soul  who  finds  his  way  to  them.  The  art 
of  criticism  flourishes,  but,  although  stiffened  into 
a  body  of  dogmatic  precept,  often  enough  goes 
hand  in  hand  with  genuine  appreciation.  It  is  not 


34  Little  Leaders 

true  that,  properly  to  enjoy  literature,  an  age  must 
produce  literature  of  its  own.  If  the  coming  gen- 
eration of  English  letters  were  to  prove  one  of 
sterility,  the  wise  should  have  slight  cause  for 
regret.  It  will  be  a  long  while  before  our  race 
outgrows  the  ideals  of  Shelley  and  Wordsworth 
and  Tennyson  ;  some  of  them,  it  is  to  be  hoped, 
neither  our  race,  nor  mankind,  will  ever  outgrow. 
Indeed,  the  prospect  of  new  masterpieces  in  un- 
interrupted succession  would  be  rather  appalling 
than  otherwise.  We  should  despair  of  catching 
up,  and  the  works  made  classical  by  the  infalli- 
ble test  of  time  would  suffer  more  neglect  than 
they  do  now.  The  real  interests  of  culture  almost 
demand  such  breathing-spells  as,  by  a  natural  law 
no  less  beneficent  than  mysterious,  follow  upon 
the  periods  that  have  exhausted  themselves  in 
giving  expression  to  the  struggles  of  the  spirit  in 
its  ascent  from  '  the  sloughs  of  a  low  desire.'  But 
the  critical  and  reflective  age  has  its  dangers,  and 
chief  among  them  is  the  encouragement  it  gives 
to  the  ascendency  of  the  cult. 

The  literary  cult  has  two  principal  forms  :  it 
appears  as  the  unintelligent  (because  unsympa- 
thetic) worship  of  a  really  great  writer,  or  it  takes 


Literature  and  Criticism        35 

the  shape  of  laudation,  both  undue  and  uneven, 
of  a  writer  of  only  secondary  importance.  In 
the  first  case,  it  converts  the  object  of  its  adora- 
tion into  a  fetich,  worshipping  it  as  such  rather 
than  as  a  living  spiritual  force.  In  the  second  case, 
it  raises  a  private  altar  for  the  exclusive  use  of  the 
elect,  and  develops  in  its  adherents  a  sort  of  intel- 
lectual priggishness,  as  satisfactory  to  them  as  it 
is  amusing  to  others.  A  great  deal  of  the  mod- 
ern study  of  Homer  and  Dante  and  Shakespeare 
illustrates  the  first  form  of  the  literary  cult ;  the 
second  form  receives  illustration  at  many  hands, 
the  devotees  of  Browning  and  Mr.  Meredith,  of 
Baudelaire  and  M.  Verlaine,  of  Dr.  Ibsen  and 
Count  Tolstoi,  offering  a  few  of  the  later  exam- 
ples. 

We  have  said  that  the  cult  of  such  writers  as 
these  takes  the  shape  of  a  laudation  that  is  both 
undue  and  uneven.  It  is  upon  the  second  of 
these  characteristics  that  stress  should  principally 
be  laid,  for  the  most  astonishing  feature  of  the 
Browning  or  the  Baudelaire  or  the  Ibsen  cult  is 
its  deliberate  neglect  of  the  really  great  qualities 
of  these  men,  and  the  emphasis  given  the  acci- 
dental and  inartistic  aspects  of  their  work.  No- 


36  Little  Leaders 

bier  poetry  than  may  be  found  in  the  work  of 
Browning  hardly  occurs  in  English  literature,  but 
the  work  of  the  Browning  societies  would  not 
often  lead  us  to  suspect  its  existence.  Baude- 
laire touched  with  a  master  hand  some  of  the 
deepest  chords  of  human  feeling,  but  those  who 
magnify  his  name  are  apt  to  fix  our  attention  upon 
the  charnel  -  house  elements  of  his  verse,  and 
almost  make  us  sympathize  with  the  recent  sug- 
gestion of  M.  Brunetiere,  that  the  proposed  statue 
of  the  poet  should  be  placed  at  the  mouth  of  a 
sewer.  Dr.  Ibsen,  in  his  deeper  moods,  speaks 
with  an  ethical  fervor  that  seems  to  his  readers 
the  very  bread  of  life,  but  those  who  sing  his 
praises  in  the  public  ear  only  ask  us  to  admire 
the  trivialities  or  the  morbid  features  of  his  analy- 
sis of  modern  society.  It  is  not  surprising  that 
a  writer  like  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  having,  to 
begin  with,  but  little  sense  of  humor,  should  allow 
his  indignation  at  such  critical  antics  to  get  the 
better  of  amusement,  and  indulge  in  the  follow- 
ing outburst : 

'  I  know  that,  in  the  style  of  to-day,  I  ought  hardly  to 
venture  to  speak  about  poetry  unless  I  am  prepared  to 
unfold  the  mysterious  beauties  of  some  unknown  genius 


Literature  and  Criticism         37 

who  has  recently  been  unearthed  by  the  Children  of  Light 
and  Sweetness.  I  confess  I  have  no  such  discovery  to 
announce.  I  prefer  to  dwell  in  Gath  and  to  pitch  my 
tents  in  Ashdod  ;  and  I  doubt  the  use  of  the  sling  as  a 
weapon  in  modern  war.  I  decline  to  go  into  hyperbolic 
eccentricities  over  unknown  geniuses,  and  a  single  quality 
or  power  is  not  enough  to  rouse  my  enthusiasm.  It  is 
possible  that  no  master  ever  painted  a  buttercup  like  this 
one,  or  the  fringe  of  a  robe  like  that  one  ;  that  this  poet 
has  a  unique  subtlety,  and  that  an  undefinable  music.  I 
am  still  unconvinced,  though  the  man  who  cannot  see  it, 
we  are  told,  should  at  once  retire  to  the  place  where  there 
is  wailing  and  gnashing  of  teeth.' 

To  the  first  form  of  the  literary  cult,  the  form 
which  attaches  itself  to  a  really  great  name,  our 
attention  is  called  by  a  letter  from  Friedrich  Spiel- 
hagen,  on  the  Goethe-Schiller  cult  in  Germany, 
published  not  long  ago  in  the  New  York  c  Na- 
tion.' The  cult  in  question  has  been  going  mer- 
rily on  for  more  than  half  a  century,  and  Herr 
Spielhagen  tells  us,  in  substance,  that  it  has  been 
fruitful  enough  in  science,  but  hardly  at  all  in 
literature. 

'I  consider,'  he  says,  'as  being  two  very  different 
things,  learned  inquiries  about  the  acts  of  a  hero  of  gen- 
ius, and  the  noble,  broadening  influence  and  effect  of 
these  actions  on  the  life  and  blood,  so  to  speak,  of  his 


38  Little  Leaders 

country.  The  most  painstaking  and  ingenious  commen- 
taries on  the  "Iliad"  and  "Odyssey"  were  indited  at 
Alexandria,  a  whole  library  was  filled  with  them,  and  yet 
Homer's  sun  set,  and  not  all  this  flattering  learned  art 
could  start  it  on  its  course  again.  I  fear  that  much  the 
same  thing  might  be  said  of  our  Goethe-Schiller  cult. 
The  old  text  holds  good  here  :  "  By  their  fruits  ye  shall 
know  them."  Where,  I  ask,  are  the  fruits  in  our  art 
and  literature  which  have  ripened  in  the  Goethe-Schiller 
sun  ?  Where  do  we  find  in  our  poetry  of  to-day  Goethe's 
delicate  and  sure  feeling  for  the  beautiful  in  form  ?  where 
his  really  living  in  the  things  which  he  describes  ?  where 
Schiller's  flights  of  fancy  which  wafted  him  high  above 
the  mean  and  vulgar,  "which  enslaves  us  all"?' 

The  true  cult  of  a  great  poet  is  very  different 
from  the  form  that  is  commonly  practiced.  When 
the  day  of  that  cult  dawns,  to  quote  once  more 
from  Herr  Spielhagen, l  it  will  be  understood  that 
—  always  mutatis  mutandis  —  one  must  do  as 
Goethe  and  Schiller  did.  Till  that  day  comes, 
let  the  disciples  of  Goethe  and  Schiller  go  on 
spreading  wider  and  wider  their  silent  influence. 
But,  while  they  keep  alive  the  sacred  fire,  let 
them  have  a  care  not  to  weaken  their  cause  by 
crying,  "  Lord,  Lord."  For  nothing  is  worse 
than  publicly  proclaiming  one's  self  high-priest 


Literature  and  Criticism         39 

of  the  Father  in  Heaven  and  then  sacrificing  to 
Baal.'  These  words  permit  of  a  far  wider  appli- 
cation than  their  author  gives  them,  for  they  indi- 
cate the  eternal  distinction  between  the  true  cult 
and  the  false  in  the  domain  of  literature. 


40  Little  Leaders 


THE  LITERARY  WEST. 

MR.  LOWELL'S  famous  essay  l  On  a  Certain 
Condescension  in  Foreigners  '  is  in  need  of  a  sup- 
plement. c  A  Certain  Condescension  in  East- 
erners '  is  a  theme  that  calls  for  treatment  in  sim- 
ilar vein  ;  but  the  pen  rusts  that  alone  could  have 
dealt  with  it  adequately,  that  alone  could  have 
bestowed  upon  it  the  measure  and  quality  of  genial 
satire  that  it  deserves.  For  many  years  past  the 
attitude  of  Eastern  writers  towards  literary  activ- 
ity in  the  West  has  been  similar  to  that  once  as- 
sumed by  Boston  towards  New  York,  and  by 
England  towards  the  United  States.  It  has  been 
an  attitude  of  condescension,  of  patronizing  coun- 
sel, of  mild  surprise  that  a  region  so  far  removed 
from  the  centre  of  the  intellectual  system  should 
venture  to  have  such  things  as  literary  aspirations. 
1  But  you  are  so  very  far  away,'  was  the  naive 
remark  recently  made  to  a  gathering  of  American 
scholars  by  a  foreign  guest  who  was  trying  to  be 
complimentary,  but  who  could  not  refrain  from 


Literature  and  Criticism         41 

coupling  surprise  with  admiration.  Most  Eastern 
explorers  who  brave  the  passes  of  the  Alleghany 
Mountains,  and  find  their  way  to  the  intellectual 
frontier  settlements  of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  re- 
turn to  their  homes  with  a  tale  from  which  the 
element  of  wonder  is  rarely  missing.  Every  now 
and  then  some  weekly  paper  or  monthly  maga- 
zine of  the  Atlantic  coast  devotes  an  article  to 
Western  literature,  and,  whatever  the  aspect  it 
selects  for  treatment  or  the  writers  it  singles  out 
for  fame,  the  accent  of  encouragement  is  always 
marked. 

This  display  of  provincialism  is  amusing  enough 
to  all  but  the  few  who  live  in  the  intellectual  cor- 
ners where  it  originates ;  but  it  has  one  feature 
which  has  not  been  given  the  prominence  that  it 
deserves.  As  far  as  condescension  goes,  with  its 
patronizing  implications,  the  classical  essay  already 
mentioned  may  possibly  be  thought  to  cover  the 
ground,  for,  mutatis  mutandis,  its  criticism  is  ap- 
plicable to  New  England  narrowness  as  well  as 
to  Old  England  insularity.  But  the  phase  of  the 
matter  which  seems  to  call  for  particular  com- 
ment, and  upon  which  Lowell  hardly  touched,  is 
that  illustrated  by  the  kind  of  literary  production 


42  Little  Leaders 

which,  in  both  cases,  attracts  the  attention  of  the 
elder  community  to  the  work  of  the  younger. 
Americans  are  not  a  little  diverted  when  they 
notice  the  sort  of  thing  upon  which  European 
critics  of  our  literature  are  wont  to  seize  as  typ- 
ical of  our  intellectual  activity.  l  Your  country- 
men,' says  Richard  Grant  White,  in  the  charac- 
ter of  Mansfield  Humphreys,  speaking  to  his 
English  fellow-traveller, c  even  the  intelligent  and 
kindly-intentioned,  are  so  stung  with  a  craze  after 
something  peculiarly  American  from  America 
that  they  refuse  to  accept  anything  as  American 
that  is  not  extravagant  and  grotesque.  Even  in 
literature  they  accept  as  American  only  that  which 
is  as  strange  and  really  as  foreign  to  the  tastes  and 
habits  of  the  most  thoroughbred  Americans  as  it 
is  to  them.'  To  this  propensity  of  the  European 
we  must  in  large  measure  attribute  the  astonish- 
ing transatlantic  vogue  of  Poe  and  Whitman  and 
Mr.  Harte.  Excellent  writers  all  three,  and  cer- 
tainly among  the  foremost  that  this  country  has 
produced ;  yet  it  is  to  their  accidental  character- 
istics, rather  than  to  their  display  of  the  qualities 
common  to  all  good  literature,  that  they  in  great 
part  owe  their  reputation  abroad.  To  quote  once 


Literature  and  Criticism        43 

more  from  the  writer  above  mentioned,  the  for- 
eign critic  is  constantly  putting  to  our  literature 
such  a  question  as  this  :  '  Where  is  that  effluence 
of  the  new-born  individual  soul  that  should  em- 
anate from  a  fresh  and  independant  democracy, 
the  possessors  of  a  continent,  with  a  Niagara  and 
a  Mississippi  between  two  vast  oceans  ? '  And 
the  foreign  critic,  finding  this  l  effluence  of  the 
new-born  individual  soul '  to  emanate  very  per- 
ceptibly from  such  a  writer  as  Whitman,  seizes 
upon  him  as  a  typically  American  product.  To 
the  sane  student,  of  course,  these  characteristics 
of  Whitman  that  so  impress  the  foreigner  are  the 
husks  of  his  genius  ;  they  are  in  themselves  intol- 
erable, but  we  put  up  with  them  because  of  the 
fitful  flashes  of  imaginative  style  that  find  their 
way  through  these  uncouth  wrappings.  But  the 
foreigner  takes  the  envelope  for  the  substance ; 
while  for  the  American  literature  that  is  merely 
good,  according  to  the  accepted  and  immutable 
standards  of  literary  workmanship,  he  has  but 
scant  recognition. 

This  peculiar  attitude  of  the  foreign  critic 
toward  American  writers  is  closely  paralleled  by 
the  attitude  of  the  East  toward  the  West ;  and 


44  Little  Leaders 

this  brings  us  to  the  special  subject  of  our  remarks. 
When  an  Eastern  writer  undertakes  to  discuss 
the  literary  activity  of  the  West,  he  almost  invari- 
ably falls  into  the  error  of  the  foreign  critic,  and 
singles  out  as  noteworthy  and  typical  the  writers 
whose  work  evinces  some  sort  of  eccentricity. 
It  may  be  badly  written,  it  may  be  grotesque,  it 
may  be  vulgar  —  it  frequently  has  all  three  of 
these  characteristics, —  but  it  is  original,  it  is 
piquant,  it  satisfies  the  unholy  yearning  for  the 
new  thing.  Some  composer  of  dialect  doggerel, 
cheaply  pathetic  or  sentimental,  gains  the  ear  of 
the  public ;  his  work  has  nothing  more  than  nov- 
elty to  recommend  it,  but  the  advent  of  a  new 
poet  is  heralded,  and  we  are  told  by  Eastern  critics 
that  the  literary  West  has  at  last  found  a  voice. 
Some  strong-lunged  but  untrained  product  of  the 
prairies  recounts  the  monotonous  routine  of  life 
on  the  farm  or  in  the  country  town,  and  is  straight- 
way hailed  as  the  apostle  of  the  newest  and  con- 
sequently the  best  realism.  Some  professional 
buffoon  strikes  a  new  note  of  bad  taste  in  the 
columns  of  the  local  newspaper,  and  the  admir- 
ing East  holds  him  up  as  the  exemplar  of  the 
coming  humor.  Some  public  lecturer,  sure  of 


Literature  and  Criticism        45 

the  adulation  of  his  little  coterie  of  followers, 
estimates  or  interprets  the  literature  of  the  world 
in  accordance  with  whatever  vagaries  occupy  his 
unregulated  fancy,  and  the  surprising  announce- 
ment is  made  that  a  great  creative  critic  has  arisen 
in  our  midst.  Skilled  in  the  arts  of  self-advertise- 
ment, these  men  are  quick  to  enlarge  the  foot- 
hold thus  gained ;  their  reputations  grow  like 
snowballs  :  they  come  to  take  themselves  as  seri- 
ously as  they  are  taken  by  others ;  and  the  peo- 
ple of  real  culture  and  refinement,  whose  num- 
bers are  so  rapidly  increasing  in  the  West,  have 
to  endure  the  humiliation  of  being  represented,  in 
the  minds  of  a  large  proportion  of  their  fellow- 
countrymen,  by  men  who  are  neither  cultured 
nor  refined.  In  the  meanwhile,  hundreds  of  men 
and  women  throughtout  the  West  are  engaged 
in  producing  literary  work  too  excellent  to  be 
obtrusive,  work  that  conforms  to  the  recognized 
standards  of  all  serious  writing,  work  that  scorns 
to  be  effective  at  the  cost  of  style  and  modera- 
tion and  good  taste.  But  if  the  average  Eastern 
reader  be  asked  who,  in  his  mind,  are  the  repre- 
sentative writers  of  the  West,  he  will  name  per- 
sons indignantly  repudiated,  for  the  most  part,  by 


46  Little  Leaders 

Western  readers  of  intelligence  and  discrimina- 
tion. The  selection  will  doubtless  be  made  in 
good  faith,  and  the  fault  will  not  be  his ;  it  will 
be  the  fault  of  the  newspapers  that  have  supplied 
him  with  the  information,  of  the  careless  critics 
who  make  it  a  matter  of  faith  that  whatever  is 
Western  must  needs  be  wild.  A  heavy  respon- 
sibility rest  with  these  critics  both  for  the  part 
they  play  in  giving  notoriety  to  scribblers  who 
offend  against  art,  and  for  their  persistent  failure 
to  recognize  the  really  praiseworthy  work  done 
by  Western  writers. 

We  do  not  claim  that  this  work  is  as  yet  very 
great  in  amount,  or  that  much  of  it  deserves  very 
high  praise ;  but  we  do  claim  that  it  is  respect- 
able both  in  quality  and  quantity,  and  that  both 
of  these  facts  are  to  a  considerable  extent  ignored 
by  Eastern  writers.  We  expect  that  the  West 
will  make  a  large  contribution  to  American  liter- 
ature during  the  coming  ten  or  twenty  years;  and, 
if  ever  sane  criticism  is  needed,  it  is  at  such  a 
time.  But  the  criticism  we  get  tends  to  discour- 
age honest  workmanship  and  to  encourage  what 
is  extravagant  and  meretricious.  Above  all,  it  is 
time  to  have  done  with  the  notion,  forced  upon 


Literature  and  Criticism        47 

us  with  wearisome  iteration  by  certain  writers, 
both  Eastern  and  Western,  that  the  West  is  now 
developing,  or  ever  will  develope,  a  distinctive  lit- 
erature of  its  own.  The  West  and  the  East  are 
peopled  by  the  same  sort  of  men  and  women,  and 
their  work,  when  it  deserves  the  name  of  litera- 
ture at  all,  has,  and  will  have,  the  characteristics 
common  to  all  good  writing  in  the  English  lan- 
guage. The  distinction  between  East  and  West 
will  never  be  other  than  an  artificial  one ;  even 
now,  many  of  the  best  writers  of  either  section 
came  to  it  from  the  other.  If  the  national  centre 
of  literary  activity  follows  the  Westward  path  of 
the  centre  of  population,  as  seems  probable,  it  will 
carry  with  it  the  accepted  literary  tradition,  before 
which  all  crude  local  growths  of  tradition  will  be 
forced  to  give  way.  The  coming  literature  of 
the  West  may  be  largely  Western  in  its  themes, 
but  it  will  never  be  Western  in  its  manner,  as 
certain  blatant  rhetoricians  would  persuade  us. 
Except  in  their  relation  to  choice  of  subject-mat- 
ter, the  terms  Eastern  and  Western,  Northern 
and  Southern,  have  absolutely  no  literary  meaning 
in  a  country  all  of  whose  parts  have  a  common 
speech.  The  same  standards  apply  to  all  the  lit- 


48  Little  Leaders 

erature  written  in  the  English  language,  whether 
produced  in  England  or  Australia,  in  Canada  or 
the  United  States.  Still  more  closely  do  they  ap- 
ply to  the  literature  produced  in  different  sections 
of  our  country,  and  it  is  an  unfortunate  application 
of  local  patriotism,  whether  Eastern  or  Western, 
that  seeks  to  create  a  distinction  where  none 
should  exist,  or  that,  in  its  endeavor  to  create 
such  a  distinction,  ignores  the  necessary  unity  of 
a  national  literature,  and  attaches  undue  weight 
to  the  accidental  qualities  of  its  particular  mani- 
festations. 


Literature  and  Criticism        49 


THE  WRITER  AND  HIS  HIRE. 

THE  notion  that  literary  work  should  not  be  done 
for  pay,  that  it  should  be  exempted  from  the  com- 
mercial conditions  under  which  man  ordinarily 
does  service  to  his  fellows,  is  one  that  frequently 
finds  expression  (and  sometimes  most  unexpect- 
edly) among  professional  men  of  letters.  It  has 
more  than  once  proved  an  obstacle  in  the  path 
of  the  London  Society  of  Authors,  and  has  prob- 
ably been  among  the  causes  that  have  thus  far 
prevented  an  effective  similar  organization  of  the 
literary  workers  of  our  own  country.  Mr.  Wal- 
ter Besant  has  done  yeoman  service  in  combat- 
ting this  idea  among  Englishmen,  but  it  seems  to 
have  something  of  the  hydra's  vitality,  and  the 
severance  of  one  head  is  but  the  signal  for  an- 
other to  rear  its  crest.  A  recent  deliverance  upon 
this  subject  occurs  in  c  Scribner's  Magazine,'  and 
is  of  peculiar  interest  as  expressing  the  opinion  of 
a  writer  who  is  no  less  shrewd  in  the  manage- 
ment of  his  business  affairs  than  accomplished  as 


50  Little  Leaders 

a  man  of  letters.  Mr.  Howells  (for  he  it  is  to 
whom  we  refer)  has  a  weakness  for  the  paradox- 
ical, and  it  is  not  always  safe  to  take  him  quite 
as  seriously  as  he  reads.  But  his  recent  discus- 
sion of  the  literary  life  in  its  business  aspect  is 
prefaced  by  certain  opinions  which,  allowing  for 
an  evidently  whimsical  element  in  their  state- 
ment, still  seem  to  embody  the  doctrine  that  it  is 
ignoble  to  write  for  pay.  Mr.  Howells  is,  indeed, 
careful  to  say  that,  under  existing  conditions,  a 
writer  is  bound  to  take  pay  for  his  work ;  but  he 
vaguely  intimates  that  existing  conditions  are  all 
wrong,  that  there  is  something  essentially  degrad- 
ing in  a  writer's  acceptance  of  compensation  for 
his  work,  and  that  in  an  ideal  state  of  society  the 
man  of  letters  would  somehow  be  taken  care  of 
without  sharing  in  the  contentions  of  the  market- 
place. 

We  are  inclined  to  think  that  Mr.  Howells 
has  not  gone  far  enough  in  his  analysis  of  the 
problem.  The  man  of  letters  is,  like  other  men, 
whether  Jew  or  Gentile, c  fed  with  the  same  food, 
hurt  with  the  same  weapons,  subject  to  the  same 
diseases,  healed  by  the  same  means,  warmed  and 
cooled  by  the  same  winter  and  summer.'  In  a 


Literature  and  Criticism        51 

word,  the  man  of  letters  lives,  and  must  have  the 
means  of  subsistence.  Shall  he  live  by  his  pen  or 
shall  he  find  other  sources  of  revenue,  and  leave 
to  his  hours  of  leisure  the  cultivation  of  litera- 
ture ?  Many  men  of  letters,  doubtless,  have  taken 
the  latter  course ;  much  of  the  best  literature  has 
been  produced  under  such  conditions.  The  very 
best  literature  will  get  itself  written  under  the 
most  adverse  form  of  these  conditions.  When, 
once  in  the  centuries,  a  man  has  it  in  him  to  pro- 
duce a  '  Don  Quixote  '  or  a  l  Divine  Comedy,' 
he  will  follow  the  star  that  lights  his  soul  to  the 
accomplishment  of  its  divine  purpose.  Mr.  How- 
ells  thinks  that  Milton  was  overpaid  for  his  c  Par- 
adise Lost,'  and  doubtless  he  was,  in  the  sense 
that  the  bookseller's  paltry  stipend  did  nothing 
to  strengthen  the  motive  that  impelled  to  the 
composition  of  the  epic.  But  we  must  remem- 
ber that  literature  consists  of  more  than  the  su- 
preme masterpieces  ;  that  the  minor  masterpieces 
are  serviceable  in  their  way ;  and  that  the  work 
of  the  honest  journeyman  is  not  without  its  uses. 
That  the  pursuit  of  literature  should  be  relegated 
to  the  spare  hours  of  men  who  earn  their  living 
otherwise,  is  a  principle  hardly  to  be  defended, 


52  Little  Leaders 

and  Mr.  Howells  certainly  does  not  mean  to  have 
us  take  that  view.  The  application  of  such  a 
principle  would  spare  us  many  worthless  books, 
no  doubt ;  but  it  would  also  deprive  us  of  much 
work,  helpful  in  its  generation,  that  we  could  ill 
do  without. 

But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  literature  is  a  legiti- 
mate profession,  an  occupation  to  which  it  is  well 
that  many  men  should  devote  their  best  energies 
and  their  entire  lives,  there  seems  to  be  no  good 
reason  why  it  should  not  fit  into  the  general 
scheme  of  society  and  share  in  the  advantages  of 
its  economic  organization.  That  organization 
may  at  present  work  in  a  way  very  unsatisfactory 
to  the  ethical  sense,  but  not  even  Mr.  Howells 
will  deny  it  to  be  better  than  the  barbarism  which 
it  has  superseded,  and  to  represent  a  necessary 
stage  in  the  evolution  of  the  civilized  life.  Mr. 
Howells  seems  to  think  that  the  ideal  society  of 
the  future  will  somehow  take  charge  of  the  lit- 
erary artist  and  care  for  him  as  for  a  public  bene- 
factor, that  it  will  provide  him  with  maintenance 
in  the  Prytaneum.  It  is  here,  we  think,  that  the 
analysis  is  defective.  Under  anything  like  the 
existing  social  organization,  such  public  main- 


Literature  and  Criticism        53 

tenance  would  merely  shift  the  burden  of  the 
artist's  support  from  his  own  special  public  to  the 
public  in  general.  He  would  still  be  paid  for  his 
work,  having  merely  a  new  paymaster,  probably 
less  intelligent  than  the  old  one.  But  under  the 
socialistic  organization  that  Mr.  Howells  prob- 
ably has  in  mind,  we  can  see  no  reason  why  the 
artist  should  be  singled  out  for  special  considera- 
tion. The  honest  ditch-digger  is  a  public  bene- 
factor no  less  than  the  honest  poet,  and,  if  there 
be  anything  ignoble  in  the  acceptance  of  pay  for 
honest  work,  it  is  equally  degrading  to  the  man- 
hood of  both.  All  work,  whether  it  be  the  dig- 
ging of  ditches  or  the  writing  of  epics,  is  service 
done  by  man  to  his  fellow-men.  There  are  but 
two  things  that  need  concern  the  worker :  let 
him  take  heed  that  the  work  be  worth  doing,  and 
that  it  be  serviceably  performed.  The  real  de- 
gradation, whether  in  literature  or  in  any  other 
form  of  activity,  lies  either  in  the  doing  of  work 
that  is  essentially  worthless,  or  in  the  doing  of 
any  kind  of  work  for  other  than  its  own  sake. 

With  the  literary  worker,  the  greater  danger 
of  degradation  comes  from  the  second  of  these 
causes.  While  we  must  admit  the  principle  to 


54  Little  Leaders 

be  legitimate,  the  frank  acceptance  of  literature 
as  a  commercial  product,  to  be  bought  and  paid 
for  at  the  market  rates,  does  result  in  attracting  to 
the  literary  profession  a  large  number  of  workers 
who  have  no  higher  aim  than  that  of  turning  the 
profession  of  writing  to  the  greatest  possible  pe- 
cuniary account.  But  the  moral  to  be  drawn 
from  this  state  of  things  is  precisely  the  same  as 
that  to  be  drawn  from  any  other  occupation. 
Work  for  the  mere  purpose  of  gain  is  always 
ignoble,  no  matter  what  sort  of  work  it  may  be. 
Upon  this  point,  Mr.  Ruskin  has  given  us  the 
whole  ethical  doctrine,  has  interpreted  the  law 
and  the  prophets,  in  his  lecture  on  c  Work.' 

'  It  is  physically  impossible  for  a  well-educated,  intel- 
lectual, or  brave  man  to  make  money  the  chief  object  of 
his  thoughts ;  just  as  it  is  for  him  to  make  his  dinner  the 
principal  object  of  them.  All  healthy  people  like  their 
dinners,  but  their  dinner  is  not  the  main  object  of  their 
lives.  So  all  healthy-minded  people  like  making  money 
—  ought  to  like  it,  and  to  enjoy  the  sensation  of  winning 
it :  but  the  main  object  of  their  life  is  not  money ;  it  is 
something  better  than  money.  A  good  soldier,  for  in- 
stance, mainly  wishes  to  do  his  fighting  well.  He  is  glad 
of  his  pay  —  very  properly  so,  and  justly  grumbles  when 
you  keep  him  ten  years  without  it — still,  his  main  notion 
of  life  is  to  win  battles,  not  to  be  paid  for  winning  them. 
So  of  clergymen.  They  like  pew-rents,  and  baptismal 


Literature  and  Criticism        55 

fees,  of  course  j  but  yet,  if  they  are  brave  and  well- 
educated,  the  pew-rent  is  not  the  sole  object  of  their  lives, 
and  the  baptismal  fee  is  not  the  sole  purpose  of  the  bap- 
tism ;  the  clergyman's  object  is  essentially  to  baptize  and 
preach,  not  to  be  paid  for  preaching.  .  .  .  And  so  with 
all  other  brave  and  rightly-trained  men ;  their  work  is 
first,  their  fee  second  —  very  important  always,  but  still 
second.  But  in  every  nation,  as  I  said,  there  are  a  vast 
class  who  are  ill-educated,  cowardly,  and  more  or  less 
stupid.  And  with  these  people,  just  as  certainly  the  fee 
is  first,  and  the  work  second,  as  with  brave  people  the 
work  is  first  and  the  fee  second.' 

In  a  word,  every  man  toiling  with  hand  or 
head  has  the  twofold  ethical  responsibility  of 
choosing  his  work  well  and  of  doing  it  well.  But 
in  the  special  case  of  the  literary  toiler,  the  es- 
sence of  doing  well  is  to  be  sincere,  truthful,  and 
lofty  of  aim.  If  his  work  be  done  in  this  spirit, 
he  need  feel  no  shame  in  accepting,  or  even  in 
stipulating  for,  its  just  reward,  whether  he  be  a 
journalist  or  a  historian,  a  novelist  or  a  poet. 
And  if  the  time  ever  comes  when  all  work  is 
done  in  this  spirit,  we  shall  probably  discover  the 
existing  social  organization,  based  upon  private 
contract  and  the  utmost  individual  freedom,  to  be 
the  real  Utopia  of  which  impatient  idealists  have 
been  dreaming  throughout  the  ages. 


56  Little  Leaders 


THE  CRITIC  AND  HIS  TASK. 

4  WE  read  far  too  many  poor  things,'  said  Goethe 
to  Eckermann,  4  thus  losing  time  and  gaining 
nothing.'  In  similar  vein  and  at  greater  length, 
Schopenhauer  gave  vent  to  this  characteristic  out- 
burst : 

'  The  amount  of  time  and  paper  —  their  own  and  other 
people's  —  wasted  by  the  swarm  of  mediocre  poets,  and 
the  injurious  influence  they  exercise,  are  matters  deserv- 
ing of  serious  consideration.  For  the  public  is  ever  ready 
to  seize  upon  novelty,  and  has  a  natural  proneness  for  the 
perverse  and  the  dull  as  most  akin  to  itself.  Therefore 
the  works  of  mediocre  poets  divert  public  attention,  keep- 
ing it  away  from  the  true  masterpieces  and  the  education 
they  offer ;  acting  in  direct  antagonism  to  the  benign  in- 
fluence of  genius,  they  ruin  taste  more  and  more,  retard- 
ing the  progress  of  the  age.  Such  poets  should  there- 
fore receive  the  scourge  of  criticism  and  satire  without 
indulgence  or  sympathy,  until  led,  for  their  own  benefit, 
to  apply  their  talents  to  reading  what  is  good  rather  than 
to  writing  what  is  bad.  For  if  the  bungling  of  the  in- 
competent so  aroused  the  wrath  of  the  gentle  Apollo  that 
he  could  flay  Marsyas,  I  do  not  see  upon  what  the  me- 
diocre poet  can  base  his  claim  to  tolerance.' 


Literature  and  Criticism        57 

In  such  comment  as  we  have  just  quoted  there 
is  a  vein  of  bitterness  not  altogether  to  the  taste 
of  our  complacent  and  easy-going  modern  age, 
so  zealous  in  bearing  witness  to  its  democratic 
faith  that  it  grudges  recognition  of  any  aristocracy 
at  all,  even  of  one  as  imprescriptible  as  that  of 
genius.  Live  and  let  live,  give  every  man  his 
due  and  a  little  more,  credit  the  intention  rather 
than  the  performance,  are  some  of  the  formulas 
in  which  the  modern  spirit  of  comfortable  optim- 
ism finds  expression.  When  literary  production 
is  the  subject  of  criticism  there  are  many  motives 
at  work  in  the  interest  of  leniency  or  excessive 
generosity.  Leaving  entirely  out  of  the  question 
the  unabashed  puffery,  regulated  by  counting- 
room  conditions,  that  parades  as  criticism  in  so 
many  of  our  newspapers  ;  taking  into  serious  ac- 
count only  the  critical  writing  that  is,  as  far  as 
conscious  purpose  goes,  honest  in  its  intent ;  this 
work  is  still  often  weakened  by  influences  too 
insidious  in  their  action  to  be  distinctly  felt,  yet 
giving  it  a  tendency  which,  in  view  of  the  larger 
interests  of  the  reading  public,  is  undoubtedly  per- 
nicious. The  critic  deficient  merely  in  knowl- 
edge heeds  too  closely  the  warning  example  of 


58  Little  Leaders 

the  early  critics  of  Shelley  and  Keats,  of  Words- 
worth and  Tennyson,  and  casts  his  anchors  to 
windward,  hoping  thereby  to  save  his  reputation 
from  the  scorn  in  which  theirs  stands  pilloried. 
The  critic  whose  defects  are  of  the  heart  rather 
than  of  the  intellect,  who  is  too  amenable  to  social 
influences  or  of  too  kindly  a  disposition  to  give  the 
work  under  examination  the  character  he  knows 
it  to  possess,  softens  the  outlines  of  truth  (often 
quite  unconsciously),  and  produces  a  distinctly 
false  impression.  In  either  case  the  public  is 
served  to  its  detriment  rather  than  to  its  profit. 
The  critic's  paramount  duty  is,  of  course,  his  duty 
to  the  public,  and  every  personal  or  private  in- 
fluence whatsoever  must  be  resisted  by  him  from 
the  moment  that  its  presence  is  felt. 

All  this  is  not  easy,  and  yet  it  may  be  done 
by  a  writer  who  has  both  knowledge  and  honesty. 
If  a  book  has  little  or  no  value,  the  fact  must  be 
clearly  and  firmly  stated,  no  matter  what  the  au- 
thor under  discussion  may  feel.  This  assign- 
ment to  its  place  of  a  new  book  need  not  be  done 
with  the  traditional  brutality  of  the  Quarterly 
reviewer,  although  even  that  would  be  better  than 
the  insipidity  of  the  twaddle  that  so  often  passes 


Literature  and  Criticism        59 

for  criticism,  and  that  is  obviously  enough  in- 
tended to  win  the  good  opinion  of  the  author  as 
well  as  so  to  hoodwink  the  public  that  its  good 
opinion  shall  not  be  forfeited.  How  few  critics 
there  are  who,  recognizing  the  worthlessness  of 
books,  are  yet  ready,  in  Milton's  phrase,  to  l  do 
sharpest  justice  on  them  as  malefactors '  ?  In 
fact,  the  sin  of  the  Quarterly  reviewers  was  not 
so  much  brutality  as  ignorance.  Their  attitude 
was  hopelessly  provincial,  and  they  sought  to 
conceal  their  limitations  by  the  vigor  of  their  in- 
vective. After  all,  a  new  book  is  bound  to  show 
an  adequate  reason  for  its  being ;  if  no  such  rea- 
son exists,  the  fact  cannot  be  too  soon  discerned 
and  stated.  A  new  book  is  an  attempt  to  divert 
the  attention  of  readers  from  those  already  in 
their  possession ;  it  is  an  impertinence  unless  it 
bears  a  sufficient  warrant.  Books  of  knowledge 
must  be  multiplied  with  the  advance  of  science, 
and  their  warrant  is  found  in  new  facts  and  in 
the  more  perfect  formulation  of  old  ones.  What 
Mr.  Ruskin  calls  t  books  of  the  hour '  are  war- 
ranted by  the  special  interests  of  the  hour.  '  We 
ought  to  be  entirely  thankful  for  them,  and  en- 
tirely ashamed  of  ourselves  if  we  make  no  good 


60  Little  Leaders 

use  of  them.'  With  books  of  these  classes,  the 
task  of  the  critic  is  simple.  He  must  seize  upon 
their  elements  of  novelty  or  of  timeliness,  and 
must  determine  whether  or  not  they  accomplish 
their  purpose. 

With  books  that  pretend  to  be  additions  to  lit- 
erature proper — with  poems,  plays,  and  novels — 
his  task  is  different.  He  must  be  alert  to  detect 
new  notes  of  song  or  of  passion,  but  if  only  fee- 
ble echoes  reward  the  search  he  must  make  the 
fact  perfectly  clear.  Of  the  books  of  belles-lettres 
published  during  a  given  year,  it  is  certainly  safe 
to  say  that  nine  out  of  ten  should  never  have 
seen  the  light,  that  in  at  least  this  fraction  of  the 
total  number  there  is  neither  wit,  nor  invention, 
nor  grace  of  style,  nor  harmony  of  numbers,  in 
any  redeeming  measure.  And  the  critic  who  per- 
suades his  readers  that  acquaintance  with  these 
empty  books  is  more  desirable  than  acquaintance 
with  the  recognized  masterpieces  —  that  it  is  de- 
sirable at  all  in  view  of  the  real  literature  waiting 
to  be  read  —  is  careless  of  his  responsibility  and 
false  to  his  trust. 

There  is,  after  all,  but  one  standard  in  litera- 
ture, and  that  is  the  highest.  The  great  writers 


Literature  and  Criticism         61 

not  only  offer  us  boundless  delight  in  themselves, 
but  they  provide  us  with  a  touchstone  for  the 
testing  of  all  spurious  metal.  In  a  certain  sense, 
it  is  the  critic's  business  to  make  his  readers  inde- 
pendent of  criticism,  just  as  the  physician's  aim 
must  be  to  make  his  patients  independent  of  medi- 
cine. And  the  reader  who  has  formed  his  taste 
upon  good  models  does  not  need  the  critic's  serv- 
ices except  for  occasional  guidance.  But  the 
readers  who  need  those  services  for  instruction, 
in  these  days  of  insignificant  or  worthless  books 
profusely  multiplied,  are  still  many ;  and  the  critic 
who  sets  up  as  absolute  any  merely  relative  stand- 
ard of  excellence,  who  describes  the  work  of  tal- 
ent in  terms  only  applicable  to  the  work  of  genius, 
who  praises  the  echo  of  noble  literary  work  with- 
out clearly  indicating  its  derivative  character,  who 
does  not  frequently  renew  his  own  strength  by 
draughts  from  the  fountainheads  of  literary  in- 
spiration,—  the  work  of  this  critic  can  be  the 
source  of  no  real  helpfulness,  and  can  only  expect 
to  share  the  speedy  oblivion  awaiting  the  books 
that  it  seems  for  a  moment  to  magnify  into  com- 
ponent parts  of  permanent  literature. 


62  Little  Leaders 


TOUCHSTONES  OF  CRITICISM. 

WE  believe  it  was  Emerson  who  once  said  that 
he  was  always  glad  to  meet  people  who  recog- 
nized the  immeasurable  superiority  of  Shake- 
speare over  other  poets.  The  feeling  has  doubt- 
less been  cherished  by  many  a  reader  besides;  for, 
after  all,  what  test  of  the  sane  outlook  upon  life, 
the  deep  sympathy  with  its  manifold  phases,  the 
discriminative  faculty  that  knows  the  ring  of  the 
precious  metal  from  the  base  not  in  literature 
alone,  could  be  equal  to  this  ?  To  know  the 
great  poets,  and  to  be  sure  that  they  are  the  great 
poets,  not  from  mere  passive  acceptance  of  the 
traditional  appraisement,  but  from  reasoned  and 
sincere  conviction, —  this  is  one  of  the  most  de- 
sirable of  possessions ;  for  it  betokens  a  well- 
ordered  imagination,  a  just  balance  of  the  intel- 
lectual and  emotional  elements  of  the  inner  life, 
a  capacity  for  the  highest  of  all  possible  artistic 
satisfactions.  A  clever  simulation  of  this  attitude 
is  sometimes  encountered,  but  it  cannot  long  de- 


Literature  and  Criticism        63 

ccive  the  elect.  It  is  sure  to  unmask  itself  in 
relations  of  anything  like  intimacy,  to  fall  back 
upon  pilfered  formulas  obviously  hollow  as  far 
as  the  one  who  flaunts  them  is  concerned,  to  be 
caught  napping  when  some  peculiarly  vital  point 
is  at  issue,  to  betray  by  some  trick  of  intonation, 
or  gesture,  or  facial  expression,  the  insincerity  of 
the  pretended  appreciation. 

Yet  even  this  pretence  of  comprehension  is 
not  always  to  be  condemned.  If  it  be  made 
merely  for  the  sake  of  conventionality,  not  much 
may  be  urged  in  its  favor ;  but  if  it  result  from 
the  humility  of  a  judgment  confident  that  the 
estimates  reinforced  by  successive  generations 
must  somehow  be  right,  from  the  conviction  that 
failure  to  perceive  all  the  beauty  that  a  clearer 
vision  has  discerned  must  be  attributable  to  one's 
own  spiritual  defect,  and  from  the  determination 
to  assume  the  proper  initial  attitude  and  patiently 
wait  for  enlightenment  to  come,  then  it  is  hardly 
chargeable  with  hypocrisy,  and  merits  sympathy 
rather  than  disdain.  In  such  a  case,  we  aver,  at 
least,  the  attitude  in  question  is  more  becoming, 
to  say  nothing  of  its  being  more  hopeful,  than  that 
of  the  out-and-out  Philistine,  who  raises  his  stri- 


64  Little  Leaders 

dent  battle-cry  to  some  such  effect  as  this  — '  I 
do  n't  know  anything  about  poetry,  but  I  know 
what  I  like  ' — and  then  proceeds  to  descant  upon 
the  beauties  of  some  scribbler  who  does  not  de- 
serve serious  consideration  at  all.  This  sort  of 
outburst  is  familiar  enough  to  everyone  who  un- 
wisely speaks  of  literature  in  the  presence  of  peo- 
ple who  get  their  intellectual  sustenance  from 
the  sensational  periodical  of  monthly  or  daily 
publication,  or  from  the  paper-covered  fiction  of 
the  newstand,  and  politeness  usually  forbids  the 
only  sort  of  reply  that  is  adequate  to  the  occa- 
sion. The  advice  needed  by  a  person  of  this 
type  is,  in  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison's  phrase,  that 
4  he  should  fall  on  his  knees  and  pray  for  a  clean- 
lier and  quieter  spirit,'  but  it  must  be  left  un- 
spoken, and  a  smile  of  pity  is  the  only  permissible 
substitute. 

Undoubtedly  the  best  general  evidence  that 
one  is  possessed  of  the  cleanly  and  quiet  spirit 
to  which  Mr.  Harrison  so  feelingly  alludes  is 
afforded  by  a  real  pleasure  in  the  accepted  mas- 
terpieces of  literary  art,  or  at  least  in  a  consider- 
able number  of  them.  The  reader  whose  joy  in 
Shakespeare  and  Dante,  in  Virgil  and  Tennyson, 


Literature  and  Criticism        65 

in  Homer  and  Shelley,  in  Goethe  and  Cervantes, 
is  genuine  and  perennial,  is  entitled  to  feel  some 
confidence  in  his  judgment  of  the  moderns,  as 
yet  unclassified  and  unranked ;  to  him,  literature 
is  no  trackless  forest,  but  a  familiar  well-travelled 
highway,  provided  with  sign-posts  and  landmarks. 
The  great  names  of  literature  are  touchstones 
which  teach  us  unerringly  to  know  the  good  from 
the  meretricious,  even  among  the  slightest  produc- 
tions of  the  hour.  For  it  is  a  mistake  to  assume 
that  because  the  major  poet  is  so  immeasurably 
removed  from  the  minor  poet  each  must  be  judged 
by  the  standards  of  his  own  class.  The  hope- 
less confusion  of  perspective  that  results  from 
this  assumption  is  only  too  familiar  to  readers  of 
current  criticism.  How  often  do  we  find  some 
insignificant  poetaster  of  the  day  characterized  in 
terms  that  would  give  us  pause  were  they  applied 
to  one  of  the  master-singers  of  the  world.  How 
many  l  new  poets '  have  been  noisily  heralded 
during  the  last  twenty  years,  only  to  be  consigned 
to  forgetfulness  a  few  months  later.  These  crit- 
ical extravagances  are  extremely  unfortunate,  for 
they  bewilder  the  seeker  after  the  beautiful,  lead- 
ing him  into  many  a  will-o'-the-wisp-haunted 


66  Little  Leaders 

morass,  besides  tending  to  bring  all  criticism  into 
disrepute.  They  are  probably  responsible  in  large 
measure  for  the  amazing  opinion,  to  which  recent 
years  have  given  considerable  currency,  that  crit- 
icism has  no  business  to  be  anything  more  than 
a  subjective  record  of  the  critic's  impressions,  an 
unreasoned  enumeration  of  his  likes  and  dislikes. 
But  however  prevalent  such  an  opinion  may 
become  among  the  superficially-minded,  genuine 
criticism,  based  upon  the  fundamental  principles 
of  art,  is  not  likely  to  abdicate  its  function,  any 
more  than  genuine  economics  is  likely  to  abandon 
its  scientific  and  rational  procedure  because  of  the 
subjective  semi-emotional  discussion  that  now  in 
so  many  quarters  usurps  its  name.  And  what- 
ever the  special  method  that  criticism  may  choose 
to  pursue,  it  will  never  forget  that  literary  art  ex- 
ists, that  its  fundamentals  have  the  sanction  of 
the  centuries,  that  any  marked  departure  from 
those  fundamentals  is  almost  sure  to  be  an  indi- 
cation of  decadence  or  degeneracy,  and  that  ap- 
proved literature  provides  an  almost  infallible 
touchstone  by  which  to  test  the  value  of  the  lit- 
erature yet  on  trial.  The  best  criticism  is  that 
which  we  get  from  those  writers  whose  knowl- 


Literature  and  Criticism        67 

edge  of  the  great  poets  is  widest,  and  whose  sense 
of  their  excellence  is  most  unfailing.  To  narrow 
this  suggested  method  from  the  general  to  the 
particular,  we  may  say  that  Matthew  Arnold's 
plan  of  keeping  within  memory's  reach  a  few 
carefully  selected  examples  of  faultless  diction,  for 
purposes  of  comparison,  is  hardly  to  be  improved 
upon.  Arnold  was  entirely  right  in  saying  that  to 
recognize  the  4  grand  style '  by  this  sort  of  touch- 
stone we  do  not  need  to  be  able  to  define  it,  and 
he  might  have  added  that  no  kind  of  a  definition 
would  help  anyone  to  recognize  it  who,  when 
brought  into  its  presence,  could  remain  uncon- 
scious thereof.  What  he  says  of  the  'grand  style  ' 
is  equally  applicable  to  the  other  types  of  style 
which  literature  embodies.  Symonds  suggested 
a  similar  test  of  lyric  excellence  when  he  said  that 
1  a  genuine  liking  for  "Prometheus  Unbound"  may 
be  reckoned  the  touchstone  of  a  man's  capacity 
for  understanding  lyric  poetry.'  And  as  Arnold 
tells  us  that  the  reader  who  does  not  intuitively 
recognize  the  l  grand  style '  in  Milton's  l  Stand- 
ing on  earth,  not  rapt  above  the  pole,'  etc.,  can 
expect  no  other  answer  than  l  the  Gospel  words  : 
Moriemini  in  peccatis  vestrisj  so  Symonds  tells  us 


68  Little  Leaders 

that  *  if  a  critic  is  so  dull  as  to  ask  what  "  Light 
of  Life  !  thy  lips  enkindle  "  means,  or  to  whom  it 
is  addressed,  none  can  help  him  any  more  than 
one  can  help  a  man  whose  sense  of  hearing  is  too 
gross  for  the  tenuity  of  a  bat's  cry.' 

Perhaps  a  word  may  be  said,  in  closing,  of  an- 
other sort  of  touchstone,  one  having  no  objective 
value  to  speak  of,  yet  subjectively  of  considerable 
interest  to  many  of  us.  There  are  several  pretty 
tales  going  about  of  life-long  friendships  formed 
and  cemented  by  a  common  love  for  FitzGerald's 
1  Omar.'  Akin  to  these  in  their  suggestion  is  the 
beautiful  story  of  the  Sicilians  and  their  love  for 
Euripides,  the  story  which  Browning  has  immor- 
talized in  the  first  adventure  of  Balaustion.  Al- 
most everyone  who  is  widely  read  in  literature 
takes  to  his  heart  of  hearts  some  poet,  as  often 
as  not  of  inferior  rank,  whose  message  is  yet  of 
such  a  nature  as  to  make  the  strongest  possible 
appeal  to  the  individual  idiosyncrasy.  Such  a 
poet  becomes,  to  the  one  whose  heart  he  has 
reached,  a  sort  of  touchstone  to  be  applied  to  the 
rest  of  mankind,  a  test  of  the  sympathies  that 
must  underlie  real  intimacy.  But  it  should  not 
be  forgotten  that  this  personal  appeal  to  a  few 


Literature  and  Criticism        69 

individuals  here  and  there  does  not  warrant  them 
in  reckoning  their  poet  among  the  great  singers 
of  the  world.  We  should  not  confuse  the  sub- 
jective standards  of  criticism  with  the  objective 
ones,  strong  as  is  the  temptation  so  to  do.  Even 
the  sanest  and  most  experienced  critics  do  not 
always  escape  this  confusion.  Victor  Hugo,  for 
example,  means  a  great  deal  to  Mr.  Swinburne 
personally,  and  so  Mr.  Swinburne,  presumably 
writing  what  he  intends  for  objective  criticism, 
bestows  deplorably  extravagant  praises  upon  the 
poet.  On  the  other  hand,  Matthew  Arnold,  not 
liking  some  things  about  Shelley,  is  impelled  to 
register  the  opinion  that  his  prose  is  better  than 
his  poetry.  It  is  hard  to  say  which  of  these  two 
vagaries  is  the  more  disheartening.  If  such  men 
are  capable  of  such  lapses,  what  may  we  hope  of 
lesser  critics  ?  One  thing,  at  least,  is  clear.  It 
cannot  be  asserted  too  frequently  or  too  insist- 
ently that  the  likes  or  the  dislikes  of  a  critic  have 
nothing  to  do  with  criticism,  if  the  term  is  to  be 
taken  intelligibly.  The  argument,  c  This  work 
is  good  because  I  like  it,  and  this  other  work  is 
not  good  because  I  dislike  it,'  is  nothing  more 
than  childish  dogmatism,  and  quickly  leads  to 


7O  Little  Leaders 

some  such  reductio  ad  absurdum  as  has  been  illus- 
trated. In  any  objective  sense,  no  merely  per- 
sonal preference,  however  strongly  felt,  is  to  be 
reckoned  among  the  touchstones  of  genuine  crit- 
icism. 


Literature  and  Criticism        71 


ANONYMITY  IN  LITERARY 
CRITICISM. 

THE  question  of  responsibility  for  criticism  is  one 
of  the  most  difficult  with  which  the  literary  pro- 
fession has  to  deal.  Should  it  be  signed  or  un- 
signed, personal  or  impersonal ;  should  it  express 
the  opinion  of  an  individual  or  of  an  organ  ?  The 
question  has  been  ably  and  amply  discussed  from 
both  points  of  view,  and  both  systems  (in  English- 
speaking  countries,  at  least)  have  been  found  to 
work  well  in  practice.  In  behalf  of  the  principle 
of  anonymity  it  is  argued,  first,  that  criticism  has 
increased  weight  when  put  forth  with  all  the  au- 
thority of  a  paper  or  review  that  has  gained  the 
confidence  of  the  public ;  second,  that  by  this 
method  alone  is  untrammelled  criticism,  free  from 
personal  obligations  or  reservations,  to  be  secured. 
Upon  these  two  leading  arguments  the  case  for 
anonymity  rests ;  others  are  occasionally  brought 
forward,  but  examination  shows  them  to  be  either 
of  a  derivative  nature  or  of  minor  importance. 


72  Little  Leaders 

In  behalf  of  the  criticism  for  which  personal 
responsibility  is  assumed,  we  are  told,  first,  that 
all  such  criticism  really  is  the  work  of  individuals, 
and  that  it  is  unworthy  to  pretend  that  it  is  any- 
thing else ;  second,  that  intentional  unfairness  is 
less  likely  to  be  displayed  when  authorship  is 
avowed  than  when  it  is  concealed ;  third,  that 
injustice  is  done  to  the  critic  himself  when  the 
periodical  to  which  he  contributes  assumes  all  the 
credit  for  his  work,  and  that  this  assumption  re- 
acts upon  the  work,  tending  to  make  it  colorless 
and  weak. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  for  us  to  say,  in  so  many 
words,  that  the  arguments  for  personal  responsi- 
bility seem  to  us  the  weightier,  since  we  have, 
from  the  start,  adhered  to  the  practice  of  publish- 
ing signed  criticisms  of  all  the  important  works 
reviewed  in  l  The  Dial.'  While  granting  that 
the  impersonal  system  has  some  advantages,  it 
seems  to  admit  of  still  more  abuses.  The  nature 
of  these  abuses  has  been  succinctly  set  forth  by 
Mr.  Besant  in  a  recent  article.  He  says  : 

'  I  should  rejoice  to  see  the  custom  of  signing  criti- 
cisms in  literature  and  art  become  general,  for  several 
reasons.  First,  because  it  would  instantly,  I  believe,  de- 


Literature  and  Criticism        73 

molish  the  flippant  smartness  and  insolence  with  which 
some  papers  allow  their  columns  to  be  disfigured — smart- 
ness which  disguises  the  fact  that  the  critic  knows  nothing 
of  his  subject ;  it  would  force  the  writer  at  least  to  read 
the  book  ;  it  would  put  an  end  to  the  reviewing  of  books 
in  the  batch  ;  it  would  make  the  young  critic  anxious  to 
advance  his  own  name  as  a  writer  who  can  deliver  care- 
fully considered  judgment  in  the  courteous  language  of 
a  gentleman  ;  this  language  he  would  study  to  preserve 
in  his  work,  or  to  learn  if  he  had  never  learned  it ;  and 
it  would  enormously  raise  the  position  and  status  of  a 
critic  in  the  eyes  of  the  editor,  as  well  as  those  of  the  read- 
ing public.  That  it  would  also  rapidly  advance  the 
capable  critic  in  his  own  profession  may  be  taken  for 
granted.' 

For  these  reasons,  and  for  others  of  a  similar 
character,  we  think  it  desirable  that  the  author- 
ship of  literary  criticism  should,  as  a  rule,  be 
acknowledged. 

There  is,  however,  one  abuse  connected  with 
the  system  of  signed  reviews  that  requires  a  mo- 
ment's consideration.  When  this  system  is  in 
use,  the  temptation  is  strong  to  secure  the  names 
of  well-known  writers,  regardless  of  their  fitness 
for  the  work.  We  have  far  too  much  of  this 
misdirected  effort,  both  in  the  sensational  press  of 
the  day  and  of  the  month.  Some  periodicals  of 


74  Little  Leaders 

the  sort  in  question  even  display  title-pages  or 
tables  of  contents  in  which  the  names  of  their 
contributors  appear  in  heavy-faced  type,  while  the 
subjects  of  the  contributions  are  printed  in  the 
most  modest  and  inconspicuous  of  characters.  In 
fact,  one  of  the  greatest  vices  of  our  periodical 
press  is  this  willingness  to  appeal  to  the  public 
ear  by  means  of  names  rather  than  by  means  of 
serious  and  competent  discussion.  When  the  sub- 
ject considered  is  subordinated  to  the  personality 
of  the  man  who  writes  about  it,  we  have  reached 
something  very  like  a  reduct'io  ad  absurdum  of  the 
system.  At  all  events,  we  have  shown  how  a 
system,  excellent  in  principle,  may  be  condemned 
by  its  own  excesses.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
anonymous  system  too  easily  lends  itself  to  con- 
cealment of  the  poverty  of  the  resources  at  the 
command  of  a  review.  When  criticism  is  to 
be  unsigned,  there  is  an  increased  difficulty  in  ob- 
taining criticism  of  the  best  quality,  and  editors 
will  sometimes  succumb  to  the  temptation  af- 
forded by  the  fact  that,  however  inefficient  the 
work  offered  them  may  be,  it  must  share  in  the 
general  prestige  of  the  periodical  in  which  it  ap- 
pears. As  regards  the  two  abuses  just  considered, 


Literature  and  Criticism        75 

the  one  appears  to  be  no  more  probable  or  dan- 
gerous than  the  other ;  in  either  case,  the  abuse 
in  question  will  not  be  chargeable  to  any  editor 
who  accepts  the  responsibility  of  his  position.  In 
other  words,  the  editor  who  is  determined  to  pre- 
sent his  readers  with  serious  and  honest  criticism 
will  refuse  to  publish  incompetent  work,  whether 
it  come  baited  with  a  well-known  name  or  bear 
no  name  at  all. 

When  we  consider  the  influence  upon  the 
writer  himself  (assuming  him  to  be  competent) 
of  the  knowledge  that  his  work  is  to  be  signed 
or  unsigned,  it  seems  to  us  that  the  argument  for 
personally  acknowledged  criticism  is  much  the 
better.  It  is  so  easy  for  the  anonymous  critic  to 
be  unfair,  to  allow  his  work  to  be  colored  by  a 
personal  prejudice  against  which  it  is  impossible 
for  the  reader  to  be  on  his  guard.  The  best  of 
the  anonymous  reviews  show  occasional  exam- 
ples of  very  uncritical  prejudice,  which,  as  a  rule 
obvious  enough  to  the  expert  in  such  matters,  is 
entirely  unperceived  by  the  average  reader. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  the  prejudice  is  so  deftly  con- 
cealed as  to  impose  upon  the  very  elect.  That 
this  evil  is  greatly  lessened  when  criticism  is  ac- 


76  Little  Leaders 

knowledged  should  be  apparent  enough.  There 
are  cases,  no  doubt,  in  which  the  reviewer  who 
is  to  sign  his  criticism  will  fail,  for  personal  rea- 
sons, to  speak  out  his  whole  mind,  and  an  occa- 
sional work  may,  in  consequence,  receive  a  more 
generous  measure  of  praise  than  it  deserves.  But 
this  evil  appears  to  us  of  minor  importance  when 
compared  with  the  evil  of  prejudice  protected  by 
anonymity,  and  unrestrained  by  any  sense  of  per- 
sonal responsibility.  Without  going  as  far  as 
Schopenhauer,  when  he  calls  anonymity  the 
*  shield  of  all  literary  rascality,'  we  may  find  a 
certain  satisfaction  in  his  vigorous  denunciation 
of  the  system. 

'  It  was  introduced  under  the  pretext  of  protecting  the 
honest  critic,  who  warned  the  public  against  the  resent- 
ment of  the  author  and  his  friends.  But  where  there  is 
one  case  of  this  sort  there  will  be  a  hundred  where  it 
merely  serves  to  take  all  responsibility  from  the  man  who 
cannot  stand  by  what  he  has  said,  or  possibly  to  conceal 
the  shame  of  one  who  has  been  cowardly  and  base  enough 
to  recommend  a  book  to  the  public  for  the  purpose  of  put- 
ting money  into  his  own  pocket.  Often  enough  it  is  only 
a  cloak  for  covering  the  obscurity,  incompetence,  and 
insignificance  of  the  critic.  It  is  incredible  what  impu- 
dence these  fellows  will  show,  and  what  literary  trickery 
they  will  venture  to  commit,  as  soon  as  they  know  they 
are  safe  under  the  shadow  of  anonymity. ' 


Literature  and  Criticism        77 

There  is  much  force  in  this,  and  there  is  pith  in 
the  author's  further  suggestion  that  a  man  should 
be  answerable  for  what  he  writes,  l  at  any  rate 
with  his  honor,  if  he  has  any  ;  and  if  he  has 
none,  let  his  name  neutralize  the  effect  of  his 
words.' 

Thus  we  see  that  one  of  the  two  leading  argu- 
ments for  anonymity  does  not  seem,  upon  care- 
ful examination,  to  be  well  based.  The  other 
argument  —  that  criticism  bearing  the  authority 
of  a  review  has  greater  weight  than  that  which 
bears  but  the  authority  of  an  individual  —  might 
be  dismissed  with  the  question :  Why  should 
criticism  have  any  greater  weight  than  attaches 
to  the  authority  of  its  writer  ?  But  there  is  really 
more  than  this  to  be  said  upon  the  subject.  A 
critical  periodical  should  be  more  than  a  mere 
collection  of  essays.  It  is  a  pitiful  theory  that 
regards  a  review  as  a  mere  dumping-ground  for 
all  sorts  of  opinions.  A  review  should  stand  for 
something;  it  should  represent  sane  intelligence 
upon  the  subjects  with  which  it  is  concerned ;  it 
should  march  in  the  vanguard  of  thought.  M. 
Zola,  who  has  recently,  in  his  address  before  the 
London  Conference  of  Journalists,  stirred  up  the 


78  Little  Leaders 

question  of  anonymity,  goes  astray  at  this  point. 
His  plea  is  for  personal  responsibility  in  criticism, 
and  is  excellently  urged,  but  he  attempts  to  make 
an  unreal  distinction  between  political  and  liter- 
ary criticism.  He  expresses  the  opinion  that 
political  discussion  should  be  impersonal,  and 
adds : 

'  At  the  same  time  I  confess  that  if  I  recognize  the 
necessity  for  anonymity  in  political  matters,  I  am  none 
the  less  surprised  that  it  can  exist  in  literary  matters. 
Here  I  entirely  fail  to  grasp  the  situation.  I  refer  espe- 
cially to  articles  of  criticism,  judgments  pronounced  upon 
the  play,  the  book,  the  work  of  art.  Can  there  be  such 
a  thing  as  the  literature,  the  art  of  a  party  ?  That  disci- 
pline, average  opinion,  should  prevail  in  politics  is  cer- 
tainly wise.  But  that  a  literary  or  artistic  production 
should  be  adapted  to  suit  the  views  of  a  whole  party,  that 
a  scythe  should  be  used  to  cut  down  everybody  to  the 
same  level,  that  all  should  be  mixed  up  in  a  common  herd, 
in  order  to  politely  please  your  public,  this  I  consider  to  be 
dangerous  to  the  intellectual  vitality  of  a  nation.  This 
sort  of  regimental  criticism,  speaking  in  the  name  of  a 
majority,  can  only  end  in  producing  a  mediocre,  color- 
less literature.' 

The  mistake  here  is  in  the  assumption  that  im- 
personal discussion,  whether  political  or  artistic, 
must  be  partisan.  But  it  cannot  for  a  moment 


Literature  and  Criticism        79 

be  admitted  that  either  the  one  or  the  other  is 
necessarily  partisan,  except  in  the  sense  that  it 
must  take  the  part  of  knowledge  against  ignorance, 
of  intelligence  against  dulness,  of  sanity  against 
eccentricity,  of  rationality  against  irrationality. 
We  do  not  decide  against  anonymous  literary  crit- 
icism because  of  its  assumed  tendency  to  become 
partisan,  or  to  express  average  opinion — it  cannot 
well  be  the  one,  and  ought  not  to  do  the  other — 
but  for  the  far  more  cogent  reasons  above  set  forth 
and  also  recognized  by  M.  Zola  elsewhere  in  his 
address.  It  must  be  remembered  that  a  critical 
review  has  to  deal  with  all  sorts  of  subjects,  not 
only  with  belles  lettres,  but  with  history  and  sci- 
ence and  philosophy  as  well.  The  word  parti- 
sanship has  no  meaning  when  applied  to  so  wide 
a  range  of  interests. 

Recurring  once  more  to  the  main  argument  for 
anonymity,  we  would  say,  finally,  that  the  criti- 
cism which  is  published  in  a  review  of  high  char- 
acter and  recognized  authority  does  receive  added 
weight  from  that  very  fact,  if  signed  no  less  than 
if  unsigned.  We  do  not  believe  that  the  addition 
of  a  signature  detracts  from  the  authority  of  the 
criticism,  and  we  are  sure  that  it  adds  to  the 


8o  Little  Leaders 

reader's  confidence  in  the  sincerity  of  the  writer. 
If  the  name  of  the  writer  is  well  known,  his  opin- 
ion comes  with  the  added  authority  of  the  review 
in  which  it  appears ;  if  the  name  is  not  well  known, 
the  importance  to  be  attached  to  the  opinion  will 
be  measured,  not  by  the  obscurity  of  the  writer, 
but  by  the  confidence  which  the  editorial  conduct 
of  the  review  inspires.  In  a  word,  when  critical 
articles  are  signed,  there  is  at  least  no  loss  of 
weight,  and  there  may  be  a  distinct  increment  of 
gain.  The  last  editions  of  the  '  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica '  and  of  *  Chambers's  Encyclopaedia  ' 
are  the  better  and  the  more  authoritative  from 
the  fact  that  their  chief  contributions  are  acknowl- 
edged. c  The  Fortnightly  Review,'  with  its 
signed  articles,  quickly  gained  a  higher  prestige 
than  had  been  enjoyed  by  the  anonymous  quar- 
terlies. If  c  The  Athenaeum  '  and  l  The  Satur- 
day Review '  and  '  The  Nation,'  following  the 
example  of c  The  Academy '  and 4  The  Dial,'  were 
to  adopt  the  system  of  signed  criticisms,  they 
would  probably  exert  a  deeper  influence  than  they 
do  at  present,  and  would  certainly  command  a 
more  unreserved  confidence  from  their  constitu- 
ency. 


Literature  and  Criticism        81 


POETRY  AS  CRITICISM  OF 
LITERATURE. 

WE  have  heard  much  (something  too  much  in- 
deed )  of  poetry  as  a  criticism  of  life,  since  the 
time  when  Matthew  Arnold,  in  his  essay  on 
Wordsworth,  started  that  famous  phrase  on  its 
career.  Its  inadequacy  has  been  pointed  out  by 
many  critics  since,  and  it  is  now,  we  should  say, 
definitely  relegated  to  the  limbo  of  half-truths 
that  fascinate  for  a  time  by  virtue  of  their  novelty, 
but  that  speedily  become  discredited.  Probably 
the  most  convincing  of  the  many  protests  it 
evoked  was  that  of  the  writer  who  urged  that,  so 
far  from  being  a  mere  criticism  upon  life,  the 
greatest  poetry  is  life  itself,  in  direct  transcription. 
But,  while  we  must  regard  as  whimsical  the  no- 
tion that  poetry  is  nothing  more  than  criticism, 
even  glorified  criticism,  we  may  freely  admit  that 
there  is  to  be  found  in  poetical  literature  a  large 
element  critical  of  life  and  of  many  other  things 
as  well.  Among  those  other  things,  literature 


82  Little  Leaders 

itself  is  of  considerable  importance  ;  and  we  here 
wish  to  say  a  few  words  about  the  treasures  of 
literary  criticism  that  are  among  the  precious  gifts 
brought  us  by  the  poet. 

In  this  age  of  the  multiplication  of  anthologies, 
it  has  for  many  years  been  to  us  a  matter  of 
surprise  that  someone  did  not  prepare  a  volume 
of  4  Poems  of  Poets,'  to  go  with  the  c  Poems  of 
Places,'  the  c  Poems  of  Books,'  the  c  Poems  of 
Nature,'  and  the  many  other  special  collections. 
Within  the  last  year  or  so,  the  want  has  been 
supplied,  after  a  fashion,  by  two  independent  col- 
lections ;  and  the  lover  of  poets,  as  well  as  the 
owner  of  dogs  and  the  smoker  of  tobacco,  is  now 
provided  with  his  own  anthology  of  favorite 
pieces.  There  is  still  room  for  a  better  collec- 
tion than  has  yet  been  made,  but  the  needs  of  a 
deserving  class  of  readers  have  at  least  received 
recognition. 

It  has  often  been  urged  that  the  critic  of  any 
art  should  be  at  the  same  time  an  adept  in  the 
practice  thereof.  This  view  doubtless  rests  upon 
a  misconception,  being  analogous  to  the  view 
that  no  one  can  intelligently  read  a  foreign  lan- 
guage without  speaking  it  as  well.  In  the  case 


Literature  and  Criticism         83 

of  the  language,  as  is  sufficiently  obvious,  the 
process  by  which  one  acquires  its  use  for  reading 
is  essentially  unlike  the  process  by  which  one 
learns  to  speak  it.  To  speak  psychologically, 
the  nexus  of  associative  tracks  worn  by  much 
reading  of  French  or  Latin  is  one  thing,  and  the 
nexus  worn  by  much  speaking  of  a  foreign  tongue 
quite  another.  To  be  more  exact,  we  should 
perhaps  say  that  the  associative  stimulus,  while 
going  over  the  same  nerve-track  in  any  particu- 
lar case,  takes  one  direction  in  the  case  of  read- 
ing, and  the  reverse  direction  in  the  case  of 
speech.  Because  the  passage  from  word-symbol 
to  concept  is  easily  made,  it  by  no  means  follows 
that  the  passage  from  concept  to  word-symbol 
will  present  no  difficulty.  A  similar  situation, 
although  a  far  more  complicated  one,  is  presented 
when  we  compare  the  practice  of  literary  com- 
position with  its  criticism.  But  it  is  nevertheless 
true  that  the  reader  of  a  foreign  tongue  is  better 
prepared  to  get  its  full  significance  if  his  associa- 
tions have  been  trained  to  work  freely  in  both 
directions  ;  and  it  is  likewise  true  that  the  critic 
of  literature  who  has  made  literature  himself  is, 
ipso  fafto,  in  some  respects  better  equipped  to 


84  Little  Leaders 

understand  just  what  has  been  accomplished  by 
his  fellow  workers.  Only  we  must  not  go  so 
far  as  to  say  that  creative  power  brings  with  it 
the  critical  faculty  ;  the  former  may  indeed  add 
something  to  the  effectiveness  of  the  latter,  but 
the  intuitional  character  of  the  one  is  still  per- 
manently differentiated  from  the  reflective  char- 
acter of  the  other. 

That  the  poets  are  capable  of  writing  good 
prose  criticism  of  their  art,  it  needs  no  argument  to 
show.  We  think  at  once  of  Lessing  and  Goethe, 
of  Voltaire  and  Hugo,  of  Shelley  and  Coleridge, 
and  of  fifty  others.  We  are  now  concerned  to 
call  attention  to  the  fact  that  some  of  the  most 
acute  and  sympathetic  criticism  of  the  poets  that 
we  have  is  to  be  found  in  poetry  itself.  Since 
English  literature  best  illustrates  this  fact,  although 
other  literatures  might  profitably  be  adduced  in 
further  support  of  it,  we  shall  be  content  with  En- 
glish examples  alone.  The  good  work  of  poet- 
ical criticism  was  begun  by  Chaucer,  who  labored 
under  the  disadvantage  of  having  no  fellow-poets 
of  his  own  speech  to  sing  about,  and  who  was 
thus  compelled  to  find  subjects  for  his  l  House  of 
Fame '  and  other  critical  ventures  in  the  great 


Literature  and  Criticism         85 

names  of  classical  antiquity  or  of  contemporary 
Italy.  From  Chaucer's  time  to  the  present,  the 
work  has  gone  merrily  on,  and  the  last  of  our 
great  poets  has  written  more  good  poetry  about 
his  fellow-singers  than  we  owe  to  any  of  his  pre- 
decessors. 

The  contemporaries  and  immediate  followers 
of  Chaucer  had  at  least  one  English  poet  to  pan- 
egyrize ;  and  so  Gower,  and  Occleve,  and  Lyd- 
gate,  to  the  best  of  their  mean  powers,  paid  trib- 
ute to  their  master.  Even  to-day,  do  we  not  feel 
some  thrill  of  sympathy  when  we  read  Occleve  ? 

« O  maister  dere  and  fader  reverent, 
My  maister  Chaucer,  flowre  of  eloquence, 
Mirrour  of  fructuous  entendement 
O  universal  fader  in  science, 
Alias  !  that  thou  thyne  excellent  prudence 
In  thy  bedde  mortel  myghtest  not  bequethe 
What  eyled  dethe,  alias  !  why  wolde  he  sle  thee  ? ' 

When  we  come  down  to  the  Elizabethans,  we 
find  the  poets  rioting  in  versified  criticism  of  one 
another.  Shakespeare  is  a  notable  exception  to 
this  rule,  and  in  the  one  case  in  which  he  dis- 
played enthusiasm  for  a  contemporary,  and  spoke 
of '  the  proud  full  sail  of  his  great  verse,'  he  for- 
got to  tell  us  whom  he  meant.  There  is  a  good 


86  Little  Leaders 

deal  of  log-rolling,  and  no  little  malice,  in  all  this 
personal  poetry  (such  things  have  been  known  in 
later  times,  even  in  our  own),  but  many  of  these 
tributes  strike  a  note  of  sincerity,  and  display  an 
insight  for  which  we  must  ever  cherish  them. 
How  true,  for  example,  is  Drayton's  familiar  de- 
scription of  Marlowe  :  c  His  raptures  were  all  air 
and  fire ';  and  Barnfield's  of  Spenser :  c  Whose 
deep  conceit  is  such,  as  passing  all  conceit,  needs 
no  defense  '5  and  Jonson's  of  Shakespeare  :  *  He 
was  not  for  an  age  but  for  all  time.' 

It  is  curious  to  note,  as  we  work  down  the 
centuries,  how  the  taste  of  each  age  is  reflected  in 
these  appreciations  of  poets  by  poets.  In  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  Milton  and  Dryden,  indeed,  as 
we  might  naturally  expect  of  the  two  greatest  men 
of  their  age,  showed  an  understanding  of  Shake- 
speare's supremacy  that  leaves  nothing  to  be  de- 
sired ;  but  the  lesser  men  of  the  time  clearly  pre- 
ferred the  lesser  Elizabethans,  or  the  decadent 
artificers  among  their  own  contemporaries.  The 
poets  of  our  so-called  Augustan  age  usually  re- 
ferred to  the  great  English  classics  in  a  perfunc- 
tory sort  of  way,  and  gave  them  but  a  grudging 
recognition.  It  is  very  amusing  to  find  Addi- 


Literature  and  Criticism         87 

son,  with  all  the  airs  of  the  Superior  Person, 
saying  of  Chaucer  that  '  In  vain  he  jests  in  his 
unpolished  strain,'  and  of  Spenser,  that  he  <  In 
ancient  tales  amused  a  barbarous  age,'  writing  on 
the  other  hand  of 4  Great  Cowley  then,  a  mighty 
genius,'  and  going  into  rhapsodies  over  that '  har- 
monious bard,'  the  c  courtly  Waller.'  Equally 
amusing  contrasted  citations  might  be  made  from 
Pope.  It  was  only  in  the  later  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, with  Collins  and  Gray,  that  poetry  acquired 
a  saner  outlook  upon  itself,  and  began  to  grope 
back  toward  the  old  truth  that  art  is  better  than 
artifice. 

The  nineteenth  century  is  so  rich  in  the  hom- 
age of  poet  to  fellow-poet,  that  an  essay,  rather 
than  a  paragraph,  would  be  needed  to  do  it  jus- 
tice. Wordsworth's  sonnet  to  Milton,  Shelley's 
'Adonais,' Keats's  'Chapman's  Homer,'  Landor's 
sonnet l  To  Robert  Browning,'  Mrs.  Browning's 
'Wine  of  Cyprus,'  Rossetti's  l  Dante  at  Verona,' 
Arnold's  '  Thyrsis,'  Tennyson's  '  Alcaics,'  and 
Mr.  Swinburne's  sonnets  on  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists,  are  a  few  of  the  countless  examples 
that  will  occur  to  every  reader.  And  we  would 
call  particular  attention  to  the  fine  critical  quality 


88  Little  Leaders 

of  the  mass  of  work  which  these  poems  so  imper- 
fectly represent.  Their  writers  have  good  rea- 
sons for  the  faith  that  is  in  them ;  they  do  not 
merely  eulogize,  they  illuminate  as  well.  If  this 
were  not  so,  the  present  article  would  have  no 
excuse  for  existence.  We  do  not  know  where 
in  prose  to  find  better  criticism  than  Words- 
worth's of  Milton : 

'  Thou  hadst  a  voice  whose  sound  was  like  the  sea  ; 
Pure  as  the  naked  heavens,  majestic,  free,' 

or  Lander's  of  Browning : 

« Since  Chaucer  was  alive  and  hale 
No  man  has  walk'd  along  our  roads  with  step 
So  active,  so  inquiring  eye,  or  tongue 
So  varied  in  discourse,* 

or  Arnold's  of  Goethe  : 

*  He  took  the  suffering  human  race, 
He  read  each  wound,  each  weakness  clear ; 
And  struck  his  finger  on  the  place, 
And  said  :   "  Thou  ailest  here,  and  here!  "  * 

or  Mr.  Swinburne's  of  Dante  mourning  over  a 
country  recreant  to  its  mission  and  dead  in  spirit : 

'  The  steepness  of  strange  stairs  had  tired  his  feet, 
And  his  lips  yet  seemed  sick  of  that  salt  bread 
Wherewith  the  lips  of  banishment  are  fed ; 


Literature  and  Criticism        89 

But  nothing  was  there  in  the  world  so  sweet 
As  the  most  bitter  love,  like  God's  own  grace, 
Wherewith  he  gazed  on  that  fair  buried  face.' 

We  hope  that  someone  will  undertake  the 
preparation  of  an  enchiridion  of  poetical  criticism 
more  comprehensive  than  has  yet  been  attempted, 
a  collection  of  the  best  things  that  have  been 
said  in  the  poetry  of  half  a  dozen  modern  litera- 
tures about  the  best  poets  of  the  whole  world. 
Such  a  collection  would  be  of  the  greatest  value 
to  the  student  of  literary  criticism,  and  would 
deserve  to  stand  on  the  shelf  beside  the l  Poetics ' 
of  Aristotle,  the  treatise  of  Longinus,  the  impas- 
sioned pleas  of  Sidney  and  Shelley,  and  the  essays 
of  Coleridge,  Arnold,  and  Pater. 


90  Little  Leaders 


THE  NEGLECTED  ART  OF 
TRANSLATION. 

THESE  closing  years  of  the  nineteenth  century 
have  made  us  more  cosmopolitan,  in  many  re- 
spects, than  we  ever  were  before.  The  world 
has  shrunk  for  us  in  several  ways ;  as  a  mere 
matter  of  geography,  the  greater  part  of  it  is 
within  easy  reach  \  politically  and  socially,  the 
sense  of  human  solidarity  is  growing  all  the  time ; 
and  in  intellectual  affairs  it  is  safe  to  say  that  no 
voice  having  a  real  message  to  deliver  is  likely  to 
wait  long  for  appreciative  listeners.  Neglected 
genius  seems  to  have  become  a  thing  of  the  past, 
and  we  now  suffer  instead  from  a  tendency  to 
exalt  with  undue  precipitancy  to  the  ranks  of 
genius  every  questionable  and  imperfectly  real- 
ized talent  that  appears  upon  the  intellectual  hor- 
izon. In  literature  particularly,  we  are  alert  as 
never  before  to  catch  the  new  note,  to  seize  upon 
and  exploit  the  new  thing.  Let  a  poet,  or  nov- 
elist, or  essayist  but  raise  his  head  in  any  corner 


Literature  and  Criticism        91 

of  civilization,  and,  if  his  message  be  not  purely 
provincial  in  its  application,  he  will  soon  find  him- 
self translated  into  the  tongues  of  the  aliens,  and 
his  thoughts  will  find  lodgment  upon  their  lips. 
Nay,  if  the  message  be  but  a  provincial  one  after 
all,  it  is  not  unlikely  to  incur  the  same  fate,  such 
has  become  our  curiosity  concerning  all  our  fel- 
low-men, such  our  insatiable  demand  for  the  new 
type  and  the  local  coloring. 

This  linking  together  of  the  literatures  by  trans- 
lation is  particularly  noticeable  among  the  peo- 
ples using  the  German,  English,  and  French  lan- 
guages, and,  as  an  intellectual  tendency,  has  fol- 
lowed the  order  just  named.  Germany  was  the 
leader  in  the  movement,  and  throughout  most  of 
the  century,  has  been  seizing  with  omnivorous 
appetite  upon  whatever  was  most  notable  in  the 
literary  product  of  other  countries.  Not  only  has 
she  assimilated  the  productions  of  such  peoples 
as  the  Hungarians,  the  Scandinavians,  and  the 
Slavs  —  peoples  closely  associated  with  her  either 
politically  or  ethnically  —  but  also  those  of  the 
English  and  French,  the  Italian  and  Spanish. 
The  works  of  Jokai,  CEhlenschlager,  and  Push- 
kin first  found  a  large  foreign  audience  among 


92  Little  Leaders 

the  Teutons ;  Dante,  Calderon,  and  Voltaire 
early  became  theirs  by  right  of  conquest,  and  the 
Shakespearian  permeation  of  German  literature 
is  so  familiar  a  fact  as  hardly  to  need  mention. 
The  English  people,  on  either  side  of  the  At- 
lantic, have  followed  the  Germans,  although  at  a 
distance,  in  thus  welcoming  the  foreigner  to  their 
hearth,  and  we  all  know  the  good  work  of  Car- 
lyle  and  Coleridge,  in  the  English  case,  and  of 
the  Concord  group  of  plain  livers  and  high  think- 
ers, in  our  own.  France,  maintaining  longer  than 
Germany  or  England  her  self-sufficient  attitude, 
has  more  recently  fallen  into  line,  and  the  most 
desperate  efforts  of  chauvinism  have  failed  to  pro- 
tect her  frontiers  from  the  invasion  of  the  alien 
writer.  Indeed,  the  proposition  that  new  converts 
are  the  most  zealous  of  all,  is  well  illustrated  by 
the  eager  enthusiasm  with  which  the  Frenchman 
is  nowadays  taking  up  the  foreigner  and  his  works. 
The  distinction  is  very  marked,  for  example,  be- 
tween the  polite  curiosity  with  which  Ampere 
explored  Scandinavian  literature  for  the  informa- 
tion of  Frenchmen  half  a  century  ago,  and  the 
genuine  interest  which  is  taken  by  Frenchmen  of 
to-day  in  the  works  of  the  great  Norwegians. 


Literature  and  Criticism        93 

In  our  own  country,  while  cordial  recognition 
of  the  established  names  of  foreign  literature  has 
not  been  lacking  since  mid-century,  we  have, 
until  very  recently,  been  slow  to  seize  upon  the 
work  of  new  writers.  Tourguenieff,  for  exam- 
ple, had  long  been  naturalized  in  France  and  Ger- 
many before  he  was  discovered  by  America.  Dr. 
Ibsen  had  done  the  greatest  and  most  enduring 
part  of  his  work  twenty  years  ago,  but  the  voice 
of  the  student  here  and  there  among  us  who  had 
discovered  him  was  that  of  one  crying  in  the 
wilderness.  A  few  contemporary  Germans  and 
Frenchmen,  somewhat  capriciously  selected,  were 
known  to  our  readers  ;  others,  equally  important, 
were  not  known  at  all.  As  for  the  contemporary 
Italian,  or  Spaniard,  or  Pole,  or  Russian,  his  name 
was,  with  hardly  an  exception,  meaningless  to  us. 
Most  of  us  who  studied  the  history  of  foreign 
literatures  were  content  to  stop  with  the  dawn  of 
the  century ;  of  active  modern  tendencies  in  the 
world  of  foreign  letters  we  had  not  the  least  no- 
tion. 

The  rapidity  with  which,  of  late,  nous  avons 
change  tout  cela,  is  a  little  surprising.  The  past 
few  years  have  brought  before  our  eyes,  in  be- 


94  Little  Leaders 

wildering  succession,  an  array  of  contemporary 
writers  from  all  parts  of  the  civilized  world.  Nov- 
elists and  dramatists,  essayists  and  poets,  of  the 
most  diverse  nationalities  and  ideals,  compete  for 
our  attention.  Not  only  do  the  new  works  of 
the  older  literatures  crowd  upon  us,  but  the  new 
literatures  of  Canada,  Australia,  Greece,  Portu- 
gal, and  Spanish  America  as  well.  Now  most  of 
these  new  claimants  for  attention  require  conver- 
sion into  our  vernacular  before  we  may  become 
acquainted  with  them.  And  this  fact  leads  us  to 
the  real  consideration  of  the  present  article,  which 
is,  briefly,  that  the  art  of  translation,  so  far  from 
keeping  pace  with  its  practice,  lags  painfully  be- 
hind. The  more  translations  we  get,  the  worse 
they  seem  to  be.  Time  was  when  a  translation 
was  at  least  apt  to  be  a  labor  of  love,  conscien- 
tiously and  sympathetically  performed.  At  pres- 
ent, it  seems  a  sort  of  scramble  to  be  first  in  the 
field.  A  novel  by  a  popular  foreign  author  is 
almost  sure  to  get  before  our  public  in  a  transla- 
tion so  wooden,  so  unidiomatic,  so  essentially 
ignorant,  as  to  be  a  mere  travesty  of  the  original. 
One  who  has  occasion  to  examine  many  of  these 
productions  is  only  too  often  reminded  of  the  sort 


Literature  and  Criticism        95 

of  translation  that  was  suffered  by  Bottom,  and 
is  surprised  beyond  measure  when  he  comes  upon 
a  version  which  is  not  an  utter  perversion.  We 
do  not  here  speak  of  the  ethical  question,  so  often 
ignored  by  those  who  deliberately  alter  or  curtail 
the  text  of  their  originals,  but  merely  of  the  lack 
of  intelligence  and  capacity  nearly  always  dis- 
played by  translators  of  contemporary  literature. 
The  simple  fact  is  that  the  qualifications  of.  a 
translator  are  set  far  too  low,  both  by  his  em- 
ployer and  the  public.  The  long-suffering  pub- 
lic, of  course,  has  to  take  what  it  can  get,  is  too 
apathetic  to  demand  better  workmanship,  and 
easily  grows  accustomed  to  the  hack-work  that 
dulls  the  taste  and  deadens  the  literary  sensibility. 
As  for  the  employer,  the  publisher,  he  finds  a 
ready  sale  for  the  cheap  product,  and  hence  does 
not  offer  the  compensation  that  good  work  ought 
to  bring.  Of  course  he  has  a  moral  responsibility 
in  the  matter,  but  he  is  not  likely  to  care  for  that 
when  his  pocket  is  concerned.  Any  young  per- 
son with  a  smattering  of  French  or  German  and 
a  dictionary  to  help  him  out,  feels  competent  to 
become  a  translator,  it  never  occurring  to  him 
that  the  cultivation  of  an  English  style  is  the  first 


96  Little  Leaders 

requisite  of  all;  while  the  average  publisher  shows 
that  he  accepts  this  view  by  refusing  to  pay  for 
translations  any  sum  that  a  competent  workman, 
the  real  master  of  two  languages,  can  possibly 
accept.  Of  course,  honorable  exceptions  to  this 
rule  may  be  found  here  and  there,  and  equally  of 
course  good  translations  will  now  and  then  come 
from  persons  actuated,  not  by  self-interest,  but 
by  a  delight  in  good  workmanship  for  its  own 
sake.  But  the  conditions  that  fix  the  existing 
standard  of  translation  are  still  mainly  of  the  hard 
commercial  kind,  and,  until  they  are  in  some  way 
modified,  the  standard  will  remain  low. 

It  is  possible  that  the  art  of  translation  may 
rise  from  its  present  disrepute,  but  the  process 
will  be  slow.  Cause  for  hopefulness  may  be 
found  in  two  facts.  The  first  of  these  facts  is 
that  the  Copyright  Act  of  1891  for  the  first  time 
gave  the  foreign  writer  some  measure  of  control 
over  the  American  publication  of  translations  of 
his  work.  He  has  it  in  his  power  to  secure  an 
adequate  translation,  and  to  preempt  the  market 
for  it.  Unfortunately,  he  does  not  always  know 
a  good  translation  from  a  bad  one,  and  even  if  he 
does,  may  find  it  difficult  to  arrange  for  what  he 


Literature  and  Criticism        97 

wants.  Possibly  he  may  come  to  learn  by  ex- 
perience how  immeasurably  his  reputation  suffers 
from  blundering  translations,  and  take  measures 
to  secure  himself  against  them.  The  other  cause 
for  hopefulness  is  in  the  fact  that  an  immense 
expansion  has  taken  place  of  late  years  in  the 
modern  language  departments  of  our  educational 
institutions.  The  languages  of  Europe  are  pur- 
sued in  the  scientific  and  literary  spirit  by  an  in- 
creasing number  of  students  every  year.  These 
students  will  make  most  of  the  translations  that 
will  be  read  by  the  coming  decades.  It  is  not 
too  much  to  believe  that  their  better  methods 
and  fuller  knowledge  will  make  itself  felt  more 
and  more  as  the  years  pass,  and  that  their  efforts 
may  cause  a  marked  elevation  in  the  current 
standard  of  literary  translation. 


EDUCATION 


THE  HIGHER  AIM. 

Oh  beati  que'  pochi  che  seggono  a  quella  mensa  ove  il 
pane  degli  Angeli  si  mangia.  —  Con<vito,  I. ,  I. 

Pan  degli  Angeli,  del  quale 
Vivese  qui,  ma  non  sen  vien  satollo. 

—  Paradise,  II.,  u,  12. 

WE  build  and  build ;  each  generation's  rise 
Brings  us  the  old  new  question :  what  the  way 
To  shape  the  soul,  and  fit  it  for  the  fray 

That  is  the  life  of  man.     Shall  these  suffice  — 

The  rule  of  thumb,  the  formula  concise, 
The  pedant's  wisdom  hoarded  day  by  day  ? 
Dry  husks  of  fact  —  do  these  the  toil  repay  ? 

Shall  this  of  all  our  labor  be  the  price  ? 

Nay,  truth  our  aim,  and  truth  is  more  than  fact ; 
Ere  knowledge  ripen  into  worthy  act 

,  The  spirit's  glow  must  make  it  truth  indeed, 
Of  ardent  aspiration  all  compact, 

Such  truth  as  Dante  won  in  sorest  need, 

4  Angelic  bread '  whereon  the  soul  mav  feed. 


A  FEW  WORDS  ABOUT 
EDUCATION. 

AT  no  previous  time  in  the  history  of  this  coun- 
try has  the  discussion  of  educational  questions 
been  so  serious  a  preoccupation  as  it  is  at  present. 
During  the  past  quarter  of  a  century  we  have 
become  pretty  thoroughly  awakened,  not  so  much 
to  the  importance  of  education,  which  has  never 
been  questioned,  as  to  the  importance  of  estab- 
lishing education  upon  the  right  foundation,  and 
of  conducting  it  in  accordance  with  the  most  en- 
lightened methods.  So  great  a  fermentation  in  so 
important  a  department  of  thought  is,  of  course, 
a  desirable  thing,  even  if  its  blessings  be  not 
wholly  unmixed.  It  is  well  occasionally  to  shake 
off  our  torpor,  to  get  out  of  ruts,  to  avoid  stag- 
nation at  almost  any  cost.  But  such  a  condition 
of  intellectual  unrest,  such  a  determination  to 
reexamine  the  old  grounds  of  the  faith,  is  always 
fraught  with  the  danger  that  we  may,  in  our  haste 
to  make  all  things  new,  sweep  away  the  good 


io2  Little  Leaders 

with  the  bad,  and  discard  some  of  the  funda- 
mental principles  of  the  philosophy  of  a  sound 
education. 

Many  zealous  advocates  of  what  they  are 
pleased  to  call  lthe  new  education'  are  so  thor- 
oughgoing in  their  notions  that  the  temperate  on- 
looker is  compelled  to  view  their  proposed  policy 
somewhat  askance.  They  would  have  us  believe 
that  the  world  has  hitherto  been  all  astray,  that 
the  educational  wisdom  of  the  ages  is  little  better 
than  foolishness,  that  we  are  upon  the  eve  of  a 
reform  in  our  practice  which  is  to  be  nothing  less 
than  revolutionary  in  its  effect.  These  theorists 
complain,  briefly,  that  education  has  in  the  past 
been  made  too  much  a  matter  of  words ;  the 
remedy  they  offer  is  to  make  it  in  the  future  chiefly 
a  matter  of  things.  To  bring  about  this  radical 
change  it  is  proposed  to  displace  to  a  great  ex- 
tent the  sterile  practices  of  literary,  philological, 
and  historical  study  by  the  productive  practices 
with  which  physical  science  acquaints  us,  to  sub- 
stitute for  the  study  of  man  in  his  social  and  po- 
litical character  the  study  of  man  in  his  charac- 
ter as  a  tool-making  and  tool-using  animal,  mainly 
intent  upon  material  comfort  and  progress.  The 


Education  103 

educational  tendency  here  suggested  is  very 
marked  at  the  present  day,  and  the  signs  of  the 
times  in  many  ways  force  it  upon  our  attention. 
It  is  a  tendency  more  marked,  perhaps,  during 
recent  years,  than  ever  before,  and  more  marked, 
probably,  in  our  own  country  than  in  any  other. 
This  is  a  fact  easily  to  be  accounted  for.  The 
development  of  physical  science  is  the  dominant 
intellectual  characteristic  of  the  age,  and  this  de- 
velopment, with  its  countless  implied  possibilities 
of  material  amelioration,  has  diverted  many  eyes 
from  those  things  of  the  spirit  that  are  so  essential 
to  the  higher  welfare  of  mankind,  fixing  them 
instead  upon  the  objects  which  their  lower  na- 
tures demand  ;  it  has,  in  a  word,  substituted  ideals 
of  comfort  for  ideals  of  virtue  and  of  the  full- 
statured  life  of  the  soul.  And  this  diversion  of 
attention  from  the  higher  to  the  lower  aims  of 
life,  this  substitution  of  lesser  ideals  for  greater, 
of  ignoble  for  noble  purposes,  has  been  nowhere 
else  so  nearly  complete  as  in  this  country  of 
unexampled  material  resources  and  unexampled 
material  prosperity. 

Matthew  Arnold,  in  one  of  his  essays  on  relig- 
ious subjects,  has  a  passage  exactly  descriptive  of 


104  Little  Leaders 

our  too  prevalent  attitude  toward  the  educational 
problem.  This  passage,  with  the  necessary  sub- 
stitution of i  the  humanities,'  or  some  such  phrase, 
for  the  word  c  religion,'  runs  as  follows : 

'  Undoubtedly  there  are  times  when  a  reaction  sets  in, 
when  an  interest  in  the  processes  of  productive  industry, 
in  physical  science  and  the  practical  arts,  is  called  an  in- 
terest in  things,  and  an  interest  in  [the  humanities]  is 
called  an  interest  in  'words.  People  really  do  seem  to  im- 
agine that  in  seeing  and  learning  how  buttons  are  made,  or 
papier  mach'e,  they  shall  find  some  new  and  untried  vital 
resource  j  that  our  prospects  from  this  sort  of  study  have 
something  peculiarly  hopeful  and  animating  about  them  ; 
and  that  the  positive  and  practical  thing  to  do  is  to  give 
up  [the  humanities]  and  turn  to  them.* 

Now  a  great  many  sincere  and  well-meaning  peo- 
ple have  been  telling  us  of  late  that '  the  positive 
and  practical  thing  to  do '  in  education  is  to  set 
aside  such  useless  studies  as  l  mere  '  history  and 
literature,  as  4  dead  '  languages  and  ancient  civ- 
ilizations ;  to  restrict  considerably  the  attention 
paid  to  most  other  kinds  of c  book '  learning ;  and 
to  devote  the  time  thus  reclaimed  from  waste  to 
such  scientific  and  even  manual  pursuits  as  are 
likely  to  have  some  direct  bearing  upon  the  every- 
day life  of  the  men  and  women  that  our  school- 
children are  so  soon  to  become. 


Education  105 

Half-truths  are  often  more  dangerous  than 
downright  errors,  and  the  consequences  of  the 
sciolist  theory  of  education  just  outlined  are  in 
many  directions  manifest.  For  one  thing,  there 
is  the  loud  outcry,  heard  in  many  quarters,  for 
the  introduction  of  l  manual  training '  into  our 
common-school  systems,  not  as  an  adjunct  to 
intellectual  training,  which  it  may  very  properly 
become,  but  as  a  substitute  for  what  is  contempt- 
uously styled  the  Wortkram  of  the  old-fashioned 
systems.  One  persistent  advocate  of  this  partic- 
ular nostrum  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  in  the  ideal 
school  of  his  imagining  '  the  highest  text-books 
are  tools,  and  how  to  use  them  most  intelli- 
gently is  the  highest  test  of  scholarship.'  In  the 
field  of  higher  education,  the  same  spirit  is  illus- 
trated by  the  immense  expansion  of  the  techno- 
logical and  scientific  departments  of  our  universi- 
ties, at  the  expense,  too  often,  of  the  humanities, 
and  by  the  determined  warfare  that  has  been 
waged,  during  the  past  score  of  years,  upon  the 
classical  and  other  branches  of  the  older  education. 
Almost  everywhere,  too,  the  newspaper  press  has 
joined  in  the  clamorous  demand  for  a  more  'prac- 
tical' education;  that  is,  for  an  education  by 


io6  Little  Leaders 

whose  aid  the  body  may  be  fattened,  however  the 
soul  be  starved. 

In  the  development  of  the  current  popular 
opinion  upon  this  all-important  subject,  we  may 
distinguish  two  phases.  To  begin  with,  science, 
in  the  first  flush  of  its  great  mid-century  achieve- 
ments, put  forth  the  arrogant  plea  that  it  alone 
was  deserving  of  serious  consideration  as  an  edu- 
cational discipline.  Mr.  Spencer's  famous  trac- 
tate upon  c  Education '  seemed  to  give  cogency 
to  this  plea,  and  for  a  time  did  duty  as  a  sort  of 
gospel  of  the  new  dispensation.  But  the  narrow- 
ness and  inadequacy  of  that  gospel  became,  after 
a  while,  apparent  even  to  the  less  reflective  of 
minds,  and  a  new  doctrine  emerged  to  fit  the 
altered  educational  attitude.  That  doctrine,  which 
has  lately  been  urged  with  considerable  eloquence, 
is,  substantially,  that  all  subjects  are  equally  valu- 
able as  intellectual  disciplines,  and  that  physics  and 
biology,  if  pursued  in  the  proper  spirit,  are  as  po- 
tent to  build  up  the  full-statured  life  as  are  history, 
and  literature,  and  philosophy.  But  there  are  now 
indications  that  a  third  phase  of  the  discussion  is 
at  hand,  and  that  the  question  of  relative  educa- 
tional values  is  about  to  receive  a  more  searching 


Education  107 

examination  than  it  has  ever  had  before.  And, 
in  this  connection,  it  is  indeed  significant  that  the 
President  for  1895  of  the  National  Educational 
Association,  in  preparing  his  inaugural  address, 
should  have  felt  that  the  time  was  ripe  to  use 
such  words  as  the  following : 

« If  it  be  true  that  Spirit  and  Reason  rule  the  universe, 
then  the  highest  and  most  enduring  knowledge  is  of  the 
things  of  the  Spirit.  That  subtle  sense  of  the  beautiful 
and  the  sublime  which  accompanies  spiritual  insight,  and 
is  part  of  it,  is  the  highest  achievement  of  which  human- 
ity is  capable.  .  .  .  The  study  of  nature  is  entitled  to 
recognition  on  grounds  similar  to  those  put  forward  for 
the  study  of  literature,  of  art,  and  of  history.  But  among 
themselves  these  divisions  of  knowledge  fall  into  an  order 
of  excellence  as  educational  material  that  is  determined 
by  their  respective  relations  to  the  development  of  the 
reflective  Reason.  The  application  of  this  test  must  inev- 
itably lead  us,  while  honoring  science  and  insisting  upon 
its  study,  to  place  above  it  the  study  of  history,  of  liter- 
ature, of  art,  and  of  institutional  life.  * 

Contrasted  with  such  an  ideal  as  this  of  the 
well-ordered  education,  how  poor  are  all  ideals 
that  but  proclaim  the  watchword  of  a  narrow 
practicality.  One  of  the  finest  expressions  ever 
given  to  the  nobler  view  is  embodied  in  this  pas- 
sage from  Newman's  c  Idea  of  a  University  ': 


io8  Little  Leaders 

« That  perfection  of  the  Intellect,  which  is  the  result 
of  Education,  and  its  beau  ideal,  to  be  imparted  to  indi- 
viduals in  their  respective  measures,  is  the  clear,  calm, 
accurate  vision  and  comprehension  of  all  things  as  far  as 
the  finite  mind  can  embrace  them,  each  in  its  place,  and 
with  its  own  characteristics  upon  it.  It  is  almost  prophetic 
from  its  knowledge  of  history  ;  it  is  almost  heart-searching 
from  its  knowledge  of  human  nature  ;  it  has  almost  su- 
pernatural charity  from  its  freedom  from  littleness  and 
prejudice  ;  it  has  almost  the  repose  of  faith,  because  noth- 
ing can  startle  it ;  it  has  almost  the  beauty  and  harmony 
of  heavenly  contemplation,  so  intimate  is  it  with  the  eter- 
nal order  of  things  and  the  music  of  the  spheres.' 

Nor  does  this  higher  aim  concern  the  advanced 
stages  of  educational  work  alone.  It  should  be 
an  inspiring  force  in  the  kindergarten  no  less  than 
in  the  college,  for  the  child,  as  well  as  the  man, 
does  not  live  by  bread  alone,  unless,  indeed,  it  be 
that  '  pan  degli  Angeli '  whereof  Dante  tells  us. 
1  Those  few,'  he  says, c  are  blessed  who  sit  at  the 
board '  where  it  is  eaten.  Let  it  be  our  task  to 
make  the  few  the  many,  and  the  largess  such  as 
knows  no  stint. 


Education  109 


THE  APPROACH  TO  LITERATURE. 

AN  excellent  educational  method,  much  in  vogue 
among  the  more  progressive  of  modern  teachers, 
is  based  upon  the  principle  of  proceeding  from  the 
near  and  the  familiar  to  the  strange  and  the  remote. 
It  is  a  method  that  may  be  pushed  to  extremes, 
but  it  is  fundamentally  sound.  In  geography,  for 
example,  a  child  starts  with  the  schoolhouse,  the 
village,  and  the  surrounding  country  made  famil- 
iar by  his  wanderings,  and  afterwards  extends  to 
scenes  unvisited  the  construction  thus  begun.  In 
history,  the  happenings  of  the  day,  as  narrated  in 
the  newspapers  and  talked  about  by  his  acquaint- 
ances, provide  the  starting-point.  In  seeking  to 
arrive  at  a  comprehension  of  the  nature  and  work- 
ings of  government  and  the  organization  of  soci- 
ety, his  attention  is  first  directed  toward  the  town- 
meeting,  which  he  has  possibly  seen  at  work; 
toward  the  policeman  or  the  constable,  whom  he 
has  learned  to  recognize  as  the  embodiment  of 
executive  authority  before  having  learned  the 


no  Little  Leaders 

meaning  of  that  term ;  or  toward  the  tax-collector, 
about  whose  visits  certain  ominous  associations 
have  clustered,  before  the  function  of  that  persona 
non  grata  has  been  realized. 

Is  there  not  in  the  method  thus  illustrated  a 
suggestion  worth  putting  to  the  uses  of  literature  ? 
May  not  the  young  be  led  to  a  true  perception  of 
literary  values  by  just  this  process  of  smoothing 
the  ways  that  lead  to  a  correct  taste,  this  device 
of  fitting  the  conscious  achievement  to  the  earlier 
unconscious  one  ?  Those  having  occasion  to  ob- 
serve young  people  who  are  going  through  the 
educational  mill  know  that  literary  taste  and  a 
genuine  delight  in  *  the  authors '  are  not  com- 
mon, that  they  are  the  exception  rather  than  the 
rule.  Yet  most  children  have,  in  the  earlier  stages 
of  their  school  life,  some  germ  of  literary  appre- 
ciation that  needs  nothing  more  than  careful  nur- 
ture to  be  brought  to  flower  in  the  later  stages. 
But  when  they  come  to  the  serious  study  of  liter- 
ature in  school  or  college,  it  presents  itself  to  them 
as  a  part  of  the  l  grind ';  it  must  be  pursued  in  a 
certain  prescribed  way,  which  is  likely  enough  the 
wrong  way  j  it  is  treated  as  if  it  were  geometry  or 


Education 


in 


linguistics ;  and  the  needs  of  the  individual  are  lost 
sight  of  in  the  application  of  the  system. 

It  seems  to  us  a  fundamental  principle  that  any- 
thing like  rigidity  in  the  methods  employed  for 
the  teaching  of  literature  and  the  development  of 
literary  taste  will  necessarily  prove  fatal  to  suc- 
cess. In  physics  or  in  philology,  the  l  course '  is 
a  perfectly  rational  device ;  it  is  of  the  essence  of 
training  in  such  subjects  that  the  work  should  be 
logical  in  its  development.  The  path  of  least  re- 
sistance is  in  them  the  same,  or  nearly  the  same, 
for  all  normally  constituted  minds.  It  is  ob- 
viously the  path  to  be  followed,  and  the  treatment 
of  a  class  en  bloc  becomes  not  only  possible  but 
desirable.  With  literature  the  case  is  very  dif- 
ferent, and  the  path  of  least  resistance  must  be 
discovered  for  each  individual  separately.  The 
imagination  is  a  wayward  faculty,  and  atrophy  is 
likely  to  follow  upon  the  attempt  abruptly  to  di- 
vert it  into  channels  other  than  those  it  listeth 
to  seek.  The  facts  of  literature  may  be  appre- 
hended by  the  intellect  thus  constrained,  but  that 
emotional  accompaniment  which  makes  of  liter- 
ature a  personal  message  to  the  individual,  which 


Hi  Little  Leaders 

enshrines  it,  along  with  music  and  religion,  in  the 
most  sacred  recesses  of  the  soul,  is  not  to  be  co- 
erced. Mere  didactics  are  as  powerless  to  impart 
the  message  of  literature  as  they  are  to  impart  the 
message  of  music  or  of  religion.  The  reward  of 
such  an  attempt  may  be  theology  or  counterpoint, 
formal  rhetoric  or  literary  history ;  but  not  that 
spiritual  glow  which  is  the  one  thing  worth  the 
having,  that  kindling  of  the  soul  which  comes, 
perhaps  when  least  expected,  with  the  hearing  of 
some  ineffable  strain,  or  the  reading  of  some 
lightning-tipped  verse. 

There  are  many,  no  doubt,  poor  in  emotional 
endowment,  and  unresponsive  to  the  finer  spiritual 
vibrations  aroufsed  by  the  masterpieces  of  verbal 
art,  to  whom  literature  has  hardly  more  meaning 
than  nature  had  for  the  yokel  of  Wordsworth's 
hackneyed  ballad.  To  one  of  this  class,  if  he 
do  not  actually  look  upon  Homer  from  the  stand- 
point of  Zoilus,  or  share  in  lago's  view  of  the 
character  of  Othello,  it  is  at  least  true  that  the 
last  agony  of  Lear  is  nothing  more  than  the  death 
of  an  old  man;  for  him  the  solemn  passing  of 
QEdipus 

*  To  the  dark  benign  deep  underworld,  alone ' 


Education  113 

is  only  a  sort  of  hocus-pocus,  and  his  ears  are 
deaf  to  the 

*  Sudden  music  of  pure  peace  * 

wherewith  the  stars  seal  the  successive  divisions 
of  Dante's  threefold  song. 

But  even  for  such  as  these  the  case  is  not  alto- 
gether hopeless.  The  appeal  of  literature  to  the 
human  soul  is  so  manifold  that  it  must  find  in 
every  nature  some  pipes  ready  to  be  played  upon. 
Dull  though  the  sense  may  seem,  it  is  at  some 
point  waiting  to  be  quickened.  For  literature  is 
life  itself,  in  quintessential  expression ;  how  then 
can  ii  fail,  in  some  of  its  many  phases,  to  have 
both  a  meaning  and  a  message  for  every  human 
being  ?  The  earliest  responsive  vibrations  may 
be  rudimentary  in  character,  and  combined  in  the 
simplest  of  harmonies.  The  heart  may  first  be 
stirred  by  some  bit  of  sentiment  that  would  be 
accounted  cheap  by  a  refined  taste ;  the  imagin- 
ation may  first  be  fired  by  some  grotesque  M'dr- 
chen^  or  by  some  wildly  improbable  tale  of  ro- 
mantic adventure.  The  ripest  literary  taste  has 
such  beginnings  as  these,  and  the  surest  apprecia- 
tion of  literature  is  built  upon  such  a  foundation. 
Between  the  child,  made  forgetful  of  his  surround- 


ii4  Little  Leaders 

ings  by  the  spell  of  c  Robinson  Crusoe '  or  the 
'  Arabian  Nights,'  and  the  man,  finding  spiritual 
refreshment  in  Cervantes  or  Moliere,  renewed 
strength  in  Milton,  or  solace  from  grief  in  Ten- 
nyson, there  is  no  real  break  ;  the  delight  of  the 
child  and  the  grave  joy  of  the  man  are  but  differ- 
ent stages  of  the  same  growth,  and  the  one  is 
what  makes  possible  the  other. 

How  far  this  development  may  go  is  a  prob- 
lem to  be  worked  out  for  each  individual  sepa- 
rately ;  and  there  are  doubtless,  in  each  case,  dis- 
tinct limitations.  What  we  have  sought  to 
emphasize  is  just  this  individual  nature  of  the 
problem,  and  the  fact  that  regimentation  offers  no 
solution  that  can  be  accounted  satisfactory.  The 
approach  to  literature  is,  in  our  current  educa- 
tional systems,  hedged  about  with  so  many  thorny 
obstructions  that  not  a  few  young  persons  start 
bravely  upon  it  only  to  fall  by  the  way,  disheart- 
ened at  sight  of  the  forbidding  barriers  erected  by 
historical,  linguistic,  and  metrical  science,  for  the 
purpose  of  taking  toll  of  all  wayfarers.  What- 
ever the  usefulness  for  discipline  of  such  subjects, 
the  spirit  of  literature  is  not  to  be  acquired  by 
making  chronological  tables,  or  tracing  the  gen- 


Education  115 

ealogies  of  words,  or  working  out  the  law  of  de- 
creasing predication.  We  may  even  sympathize 
to  some  extent  with  those  who  so  revolt  from  all 
such  methods  as  to  refuse  literature  any  place  in 
the  educational  scheme.  Turn  the  young  per- 
son loose,  they  advise,  in  a  well-stocked  library, 
and  let  him  develop  his  own  tastes  in  his  own 
way.  He  will  make  mistakes,  they  admit ;  there 
will  be  false  starts  not  quickly  righted  ;  but  there 
will  be,  in  the  long  run,  a  wholesome  develop- 
ment of  taste,  and  a  steady  ascent  to  higher  levels 
of  appreciation.  In  any  case,  assimilation  will 
not  be  forced,  and  conventional  judgments  will 
not  be  made  to  parade  as  personal  convictions. 
This  view  has  the  one  great  merit  of  allowing  full 
scope  to  individualism,  but  to  admit  that  it  speaks 
the  last  word  would  be  to  abandon  altogether  the 
position  that  educational  theory  is  bound  to  main- 
tain. That  the  young  may  profit  by  the  guidance 
of  the  older  and  wiser  is  as  true  in  literature  as  it 
is  in  any  other  of  the  great  intellectual  concerns. 
But  the  needs  of  the  individual  must  be  recog- 
nized as  they  are  not  now  recognized,  if  literature 
is  to  play  its  proper  part  in  education.  Each  case 
must  be  made  the  subject  of  a  special  diagnosis 


n6  Little  Leaders 

and  a  special  prescription.  We  might  apply  to 
this  problem  the  favorite  formula  of  one  of  the 
schools  of  modern  socialism  :  c  From  every  man 
according  to  his  ability ;  to  every  man  accord- 
ing to  his  needs ' —  although  it  is  curious  to  see 
a  socialist  precept  doing  service  in  an  individualist 
cause. 


Education  117 


THE  TEACHING  OF  LITERATURE. 

THE  methods  made  use  of  by  our  schools  in  the 
teaching  of  English  literature  have,  for  some  years 
past,  been  in  a  transition  stage,  exhibiting  a  strong 
tendency  toward  more  enlightened  ways  of  deal- 
ing with  this  vastly  important  subject.  The  fer- 
ment is  of  the  healthful  type,  and  a  fairly  clarified 
product  may  not  unreasonably  be  expected  to  re- 
sult. When  Matthew  Arnold  declared  the  future 
of  poetry  to  be  immense,  he  expressed  a  truth 
whose  full  significance  may  be  realized  only  upon 
considerable  reflection  and  the  assumption  of  a 
broadly  philosophical  standpoint  from  which  to 
view  the  coming  conquests  of  culture.  The  same 
idea  was  expressed,  with  something  of  humorous 
exaggeration,  by  the  author  of  '  The  New  Re- 
public,' in  attributing  to  John  Stuart  Mill  the 
opinion  that '  when  all  the  greater  evils  of  human 
life  shall  have  been  removed,  the  human  race  is 
to  find  its  chief  enjoyment  in  reading  Words- 
worth's poetry/  To  indicate  the  importance  of 


n8  Little  Leaders 

a  due  appreciation  of  literature  we  hardly  need, 
upon  this  occasion,  to  repeat  the  hackneyed  quo- 
tations in  praise  of  books,  from  Richard  de  Bury 
to  Carlyle ;  we  may  surely  take  it  for  granted  that, 
allowing  Arnold's  demand  on  behalf  of  conduct, 
for  a  good  three-fourths  of  our  life,  a  consider- 
able share  of  the  remaining  fraction  may  be 
claimed  for  literature.  But  if  literature  is  to  count 
for  so  much  among  our  higher  interests,  the  man- 
ner in  which  we  set  about  to  prepare  the  way  for 
it  is  surely  of  the  utmost  importance,  and  any 
misdirection  of  energy  in  this  preparation  means 
an  almost  incalculable  loss. 

The  main  reliance  of  primary  education,  in  this 
important  subject,  has  been,  and  still  is,  the 
1  reader,'  supplemented  by  occasional  outside  pas- 
sages of  prose  and  verse,  generally  selected  with- 
out judgment,  and  committed  to  memory  for  the 
purpose  of  being  'spoken.'  All  'readers'  are 
bad  in  the  sense  that  their  use  implies  a  very  nar- 
row limitation  of  the  amount  of  matter  to  be  read, 
and  most  of  them  are  bad  as  regards  the  charac- 
ter of  the  selections  included.  The  essential 
points  to  be  insisted  upon  in  the  reading  of  lower 
schools  are  two,  and  two  only.  Nothing,  abso- 


Education  119 

lutely  nothing,  should  be  read  or  recited  that  is 
not  literature,  and  the  amount  of  reading  done 
by  the  child  should  be  as  large  as  possible.  An 
ideal  4  reader '  might  easily  be  compiled  ;  indeed, 
excellent  books  of  the  sort  are  now  to  be  had. 
But  the  use  of  the  c  reader '  generally  means  wea- 
risome repetition  of  a  limited  amount  of  matter, 
whereas  a  rational  method  would  demand  very 
little  repetition.  The  jaded  interest  with  which 
a  hapless  child  cons  the  familiar  and  well-thumbed 
pages  is  fatal  to  that  appreciation  of  literature 
which  it  should  be  the  first  aim  of  primary  edu- 
cation to  encourage.  Why,  in  these  days  of  inex- 
pensive production  of  reading-matter,  should  a 
child  be  forced  to  peruse  the  same  pages  over 
and  over  again,  until  the  very  sight  of  the  book  is 
hateful  to  him  ?  Why  should  not  every  day 
bring  to  him  fresh  matter  for  the  stimulation  of 
his  growing  intelligence  and  imagination  ? 

As  for  the  other  point  upon  which  we  should 
insist,  the  reading  of  nothing  that  is  not  worth 
reading,  there  can  be  no  possible  excuse  for  the 
kind  of  pabulum  that  is  too  commonly  fed,  by 
spoonfuls,  to  the  mind  of  the  young.  When  we 
consider  the  peculiarly  receptive  quality  of  the 


Little  Leaders 

child's  mind,  the  retentiveness  whose  loss  he  will 
so  soon  have  occasion  to  mourn,  the  imagination 
so  early  to  be  dulled  by  the  prosaic  years  to  come, 
does  it  not  seem  a  crime  to  make  of  these  fac- 
ulties or  powers  anything  less  than  the  utmost 
possible,  to  force  the  free  spirit  into  ruts  and 
waste  it  upon  inanities  ?  Having  at  hand  the 
ample  literature  which  gives  expression  to  the 
childhood  of  the  race,  the  literature  of  myth  and 
fable,  of  generous  impulse  moving  to  heroic  deed, 
how  can  a  teacher  be  justified  in  substituting  for 
this  the  manufactured  and  self-conscious  twaddle 
that  is  the  staple  of  most  modern  writing  for  chil- 
dren ?  Even  for  the  very  youngest  who  can  read 
at  all,  there  is  no  lack  of  suitable  material.  The 
melodies  of  Mother  Goose,  as  Mr.  Scudder  has 
convincingly  argued,  are  literature  in  a  certain 
sense,  surely  in  a  far  higher  sense  than  the  nur- 
sery jingles  that  too  often  take  their  place.  And 
when  a  more  advanced  stage  has  been  reached, 
there  is  the  whole  world  of  fairy  lore,  the  wealth 
of  religious  and  secular  story-telling,  the  inex- 
haustible fund  of  historical  incident,  all  of  which 
must  be  included  in  the  outfit  of  the  adult  mind, 
and  much  of  which  is  better  acquired  at  an  early 


Education  121 

age  than  at  any  other.  The  child  who  has  grown 
up  in  ignorance  of  the  labors  of  Hercules  and 
Siegfried's  fight  with  the  dragon,  of  the  wander- 
ings of  Ulysses  and  the  deeds  of  King  Arthur,  of 
Horatius  at  the  bridge  and  Leonidas  at  Thermo- 
pylae, has  missed  something  that  cannot  be  given 
him  later,  and  may  justly  feel  himself  defrauded 
of  a  part  of  his  birthright.  The  sense  of  injury 
is  only  aggravated  by  finding  the  mind  filled  in- 
stead with  lumber  worse  than  useless,  with  recol- 
lections of  the  worthless  stuff",  only  too  well  re- 
membered, that  in  childhood  usurped  the  place 
that  should  have  been  filled  by  literature  carefully 
selected  for  the  value  of  its  form  or  of  its  subject- 
matter. 

While  there  are  indications  of  an  approaching 
reform  in  the  methods  of  reading  employed  by 
our  lower  schools,  and  of  reform  along  the  lines 
above  drawn,  the  progress  in  this  direction  will 
probably  be  so  slow  as  to  discourage  all  but  the 
most  sanguine.  As  long  as  the  management  of 
our  common  schools  remains  in  the  hands  of  per- 
sons selected  with  little  or  no  reference  to  their 
fitness  for  the  work  —  and  that  this  is  generally 
the  case  throughout  the  United  States  is  a  fact 


122  Little  Leaders 

that  need  hardly  be  enlarged  upon  —  we  cannot 
hope  for  very  much.  In  the  fields  of  secondary 
and  still  higher  education  the  outlook  is  brighter, 
for  the  problem  is  being  dealt  with  in  a  more  en- 
lightened spirit.  But  the  complaint  that  a  con- 
siderable proportion  of  high  school  and  college 
students  have  no  literary  aptitude  whatever  is  still 
heard,  and  benumbs  the  efforts  of  many  among 
the  well-meaning,  some  of  whom  seem  disposed 
to  accept  this  proposition  as  a  statement  of  one 
of  the  stubborn  facts  of  nature.  To  our  mind, 
the  proportion  will  remain  large  as  long  as  we  do 
not  attack  the  difficulty  at  its  root  in  the  very 
earliest  years  of  school  life.  But  we  do  not  be- 
lieve that  there  is  any  good  evidence  of  the  pro- 
portion being  large  by  nature.  It  is  not,  however, 
surprising,  when  we  consider  the  systematic  way 
in  which  the  literary  appreciation  is  dulled  by  the 
narrow  and  mechanical  methods  of  so  much  of 
our  primary  education,  that  the  healthful  growth 
of  this  faculty,  thus  arrested  at  a  critical  stage, 
should  in  many  cases  be  found  difficult  or  impos- 
sible of  stimulation  at  a  later  period. 

In  secondary  education,  the  old-fashioned  treat- 
ment of  English  literature  found  its  embodiment 


Education  123 

in  a  historical  text-book,  to  be  learned  mostly  by 
heart,  accompanied  sometimes  by  a  hand-book  of 
'extracts,'  in  which  each  representative  writer 
received  an  allotment  of  two  or  three  pages. 
Sometimes  the  history  and  the  c extracts'  were 
jumbled  together,  to  the  still  further  abridgment 
of  the  latter.  The  modern  method,  which  has 
gained  much  ground  of  late,  concentrates  the  at- 
tention upon  a  few  longer  works  and  their  writ- 
ers. This  method  is  doubtless  an  advance  upon 
the  other,  yet  it  sometimes  means  a  reaction  car- 
ried to  extremes.  We  cannot  afford  to  eliminate 
the  historical  text-book  altogether,  but  we  do  need 
to  have  the  right  kind  of  book  and  to  use  it  with 
intelligence.  For  the  book  that  gives  cut-and- 
dried  critical  formulas  —  a  too  prevalent  type  — 
the  educator  can  have  no  use.  What  he  wants 
is  a  book  that  shall  stimulate  the  critical  faculty 
in  the  student,  not  suppress  it  by  supplying  criti- 
cism ready-made.  To  direct,  but  not  to  force, 
opinion,  and  to  encourage  the  widest  range  of 
independent  reading,  should  be  the  aims  of  sec- 
ondary instruction  in  literature.  As  for  the  bare 
facts — dates,  historical  conditions,  and  the  like — 
they  must  be  learned  as  facts,  but  they  are  not 


124  Little  Leaders 

all  as  lifeless  as  many  students  think  them,  and 
a  judicious  and  sympathetic  instructor  will  succeed 
in  clothing  many  of  them  with  such  associations 
as  to  make  their  retention  an  easy  matter. 

In  college  education,  the  reaction  against  the 
formal  and  dispiriting  methods  of  the  past  has 
been  very  pronounced,  and  the  study  of  literature 
appears  to  be  in  a  state  of  generally  healthful  ac- 
tivity. In  this  field  of  education,  the  chief  dan- 
ger seems  to  lie  in  an  undue  preponderance  of  the 
scientific  spirit.  The  temptation  to  regard  works 
of  literature  as  material  for  minute  philological 
and  historical  analysis  is  very  strong,  and  this  pro- 
cedure finds  a  certain  warrant  in  the  marked  suc- 
cess which  everywhere  attends  it.  But  the  real 
question  is  whether  the  success  thus  obtained  is 
of  the  sort  to  be  desired.  Does  it  not  mean  the 
intrusion  of  science  upon  a  domain  set  apart  for 
other,  if  not  higher,  purposes  ?  It  is  doubtless 
much  easier  to  treat  literature  by  the  method  of 
science  than  by  the  method  of  esthetics ;  but 
does  not  literature,  thus  treated,  cease  to  assert 
its  peculiar  and  indispensable  function  ?  Perhaps 
it  may  be  just  as  well,  as  the  late  Edward  T.  Mc- 
Laughlin  suggested,  to  defer  c  laboratory  work  ' 


Education  125 

in  literature  *  until  scientists  introduce  literary 
methods  into  the  laboratory.'  The  effects  of  this 
1  mechanical  and  harshly  intellectualized  study ' 
are  not  unfairly  described  by  the  writer  in  the  fol- 
lowing suggestive  passage : 

'If  the  literary  neophyte's  attention  is  directed  too 
largely  toward  facts,  he  may  mistake  the  means  for  the 
end,  and  as  a  result  of  his  training  find  the  principal  ob- 
ject that  confronts  him  as  he  takes  up  new  works,  noth- 
ing spiritual  and  aesthetic,  but  only  the  task  of  obtaining 
exterior  information,  hunting  down  quotations,  dates,  and 
allusions,  surveying  a  poem  by  the  rod  and  line  of  a  tech- 
nical phraseology,  detecting  parallels,  and  baying  at  the 
holes  of  conjectural  originals,  finally  to  emerge  from  his 
studies  learned,  but  not  literary.* 

It  seems  to  us  that  pur  colleges  should  no  longer 
permit  this  sort  of  work  to  masquerade  as  the 
study  of  literature,  but  should  relegate  it  to  the 
department  of  science,  where  it  properly  belongs. 
But  many  of  our  college  calendars,  upon  compli- 
ance with  this  demand,  would  be  shown  com- 
pletely denuded  of  literary  courses,  which,  in  turn, 
might  result  in  the  much-needed  provision  for 
the  study  of  literature  in  the  true  sense.  It  is  no 
easy  matter  to  disentangle  the  study  of  literature, 
thus  conceived,  from  the  meshes  that  philological 


126  Little  Leaders 

and  historical  science  have  woven  about  it,  but 
a  few  men  have  been  successful  in  the  work,  and 
their  example  is  there  for  the  rest  to  follow.  Men 
of  this  class,  more  than  of  any  other,  are  needed 
by  our  colleges  to-day ;  and  in  securing  such  men, 
giving  free  scope  to  their  activity,  and  recogniz- 
ing the  claims  of  their  work  as  no  less  serious 
than  the  claims  of  work  in  any  other  department, 
the  colleges  will  do  literature  the  best  service  in 
their  power. 


Education  127 


DEMOCRACY  AND  EDUCATION. 

THE  coming  of  democracy  was  the  sign  most 
clearly  set  in  the  social  skies  of  our  century  at  its 
dawn,  and  the  triumph  of  the  democratic  spirit  is 
the  social  phenomenon  that  stands  out  most  dis- 
tinctly as  we  look  back  »pon  the  century's  course. 
From  our  present  point  of  vantage,  indeed,  the 
democracy  whose  successive  conquests  the  years 
have  marked  is  a  very  different  thing  from  the 
democracy  prefigured  in  the  vision  of  those  gen- 
erous and  ardent  souls  by  whom  its  advent  was 
hailed.  The  social  ideal  that  once  gave  inspira- 
tion to  the  impassioned  song  of  Shelley  has  be- 
come, in  our  own  days,  the  not  unfit  recipient  of 
the  blatant  laudation  of  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie 
and  his  like.  We  now  find  no  difficulty  in  see- 
ing what  the  enthusiasm  of  the  early  nineteenth 
century  could  not  see,  the  fact  that  the  coming 
of  democracy  meant  a  revolution  farther-reaching 
than  any  merely  political  revolution  of  former 
centuries  had  been,  and  the  other  fact  that  the 


128  Little  Leaders 

democratic  reconstruction  of  society  was,  in  its 
full  meaning  and  effect,  incalculable  by  any 
method  of  social  astrology  known  to  men.  The 
virtues  of  democracy  were  alone  foreseen ;  its 
failings  were  left  to  be  revealed  by  experience. 
Some  of  its  sponsors,  like  Shelley,  found  early 
graves,  dying  happy  in  the  faith.  Others,  like 
Wordsworth,  lived  to  grow  disheartened  by  the 
excesses  of  democracy,  and  sought  for  solace  in 
new  and  sterile  ideals.  A  few,  like  Landor,  Maz- 
zini,  and  Hugo,  of  faith  too  robust  to  be  broken 
by  adversity,  held  fast  to  the  democratic  princi- 
ple, devoting  themselves  unswervingly  to  its  serv- 
ice, never  forgetting  that  through  thorn-set  ways 
alone  men  reach  the  stars. 

The  great  poet  who,  more  than  any  other,  has 
linked  with  our  own  the  early  age  of  hope,  must, 
on  the  whole,  be  reckoned  with  those  in  whom 
the  faith,  although  it  may  have  faltered,  has  not 
failed.  That c  God  fulfils  himself  in  many  ways  ' 
was  his  often  repeated  message  to  those  who 
were  impatient  because  the  fulfilment  was  not 
immediate  and  in  one  particular  way.  He  who 
told  us,  half  a  century  ago,  of  his  l  Vision  of  the 


Education  129 

World,'  who  sounded  the  true  note  of  democracy 

in  the  verses, 

« Men,  my  brothers,  men  the  workers,  ever  reaping  some- 
thing new  : 

That  which  they  have  done  but  earnest  of  the  things  that 
they  shall  do,' 

never  really  departed  from  the  principle  then  ex- 
pressed. There  may,  it  is  true,  be  detected  a  note 
of  pessimism  in  some  of  Tennyson's  later  poems, 
but  it  is  not  the  absolute  pessimism  that  despairs 
of  the  future.  With  the  old  age  of  our  century, 
to  those  who  have  grown  wise  with  its  teachings, 
the  problem  of  democracy  has  shown  itself  to  be 
one  of  ever-increasing  complexity,  and  the  solu- 
tion of  that  problem  seems  no  longer  near  at 
hand. 

'  Forward  far  and  far  from  here  is  all  the  hope  of  eighty 
years  * 

is  a  cry  that  still  speaks  of  hope,  if  of  hope  de- 
ferred in  heartsickening  degree.  The  future  be- 
longs to  democracy,  and  is  a  future  of  fair  final 
promise,  yet  the  way  to  it  is  both  dark  and  de- 
vious, and  will  doubtless  lead  through  many  dis- 
appointments, and  offer  many  phases  of  retro- 


130  Little  Leaders 

grade  development.     We  may  still  confidently 
take  l  Forward  '  as  our  watchword,  but  must 

« Still  remember  how  the  course  of  time  will  swerve, 
Crook  and  turn  upon  itself  in  many  a  backward  stream- 
ing curve.' 

At  present,  it  must  seem  to  the  most  thought- 
ful that  democracy  is  in  danger  of  becoming,  if 
it  has  not  already  become,  a  mere  c  tyranny  of  the 
majority.'  That  the  voice  of  the  people  is  the 
voice  of  God  is  a  dictum  true  within  certain  limits, 
true  in  its  relation  to  the  broad  features  of  social 
organization,  but  profoundly  false  when  applied 
to  the  special  problems  of  society.  For  the  solu- 
tion of  the  special  problem  we  must  look  to  the 
expert ;  and  the  untrained  masses,  however  praise- 
worthy their  intention,  can  be  expected  to  solve 
such  problems  only  in  a  blundering  and  probably 
disastrous  fashion.  Only  in  an  ideal  society,  a 
society  that  should  have  eliminated  the  *  remnant ' 
by  growth  to  the  4  remnant '  level  of  intelligence 
and  culture,  could  the  vox  populi  safely  be  left  to 
decide  upon  the  delicate  questions  of  education, 
economics,  and  social  ethics  that  somehow  have 
to  be  decided  by  and  for  the  people  as  a  whole. 
Even  the  Athenian  democracy,  far  surpassing  any 


Education  131 

modern  democracy  in  versatile  capabilities  and 
intelligence,  made  sad  work  of  some  of  the  spe- 
cial problems  that  it  was  called  upon  to  solve. 

The  lesson  above  all  others,  then,  that  democ- 
racy has  yet  to  learn,  is  the  lesson  of  restraint. 

No  doubt 

'  It  is  excellent 

To  have  a  giant's  strength,  but  it  is  tyrannous 
To  use  it  like  a  giant.' 

In  the  first  flush  of  conscious  power,  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  our  nineteenth  century  democracy 
should  have  sought  to  regulate  all  sorts  of  mat- 
ters that  really  call  for  the  trained  judgment  of 
the  specialist.  The  democracy  of  the  twentieth 
century  will,  we  trust,  choose  the  wiser  part  of 
delegating  its  powers  to  agents  specially  chosen 
with  regard  to  fitness  for  special  work.  It  will 
realize  the  unspeakable  foolishness  of  submitting 
scientific  questions  to  popular  vote.  It  will 
abandon  the  detestable  practice  of  requiring  its 
representatives  to  act  as  mere  automata,  and  will 
instead  choose  them  for  their  wisdom  and  leave 
them  to  act  according  to  its  dictates. 

This  may  seem  a  hopelessly  optimistic  fore- 
cast, yet  upon  its  eventuation  the  future  of  civ- 


132  Little  Leaders 

ilization  depends.  In  spite  of  its  manifold  suc- 
cesses, democracy  is  still  upon  trial,  and  those 
who  gird  against  it,  from  Carlyle  to  Maine, 
rightly  fix  upon  the  tendency  above  described  as 
the  most  vulnerable  feature  of  popular  govern- 
ment. The  history  of  our  own  country  is  par- 
ticularly rich  in  illustrations  of  democratic  inepti- 
tude or  failure,  and  so  is  peculiarly  instructive  to 
the  student  of  political  institutions.  We  have 
settled  too  many  questions  calling  for  extensive 
knowledge  and  ripe  judgment  by  the  rough 
method  of  the  popular  vote.  Much  of  our  pub- 
lic policy,  so  far  as  it  has  to  do  with  economics 
and  finance,  has  thus  been  shaped  in  direct  defi- 
ance of  the  fundamental  principles  of  those  sub- 
jects, bringing  upon  ourselves  disaster,  and  earn- 
ing for  us  the  mingled  amusement  and  contempt 
of  other  countries.  If  the  vagaries  of  our  eco- 
nomic legislation  have  thus  contributed  to  the 
gaiety  of  nations,  the  way  in  which  we  have  dealt 
with  our  international  complications  has  contrib- 
uted to  their  righteous  indignation. 

Perhaps  the  most  searching  test  of  our  democ- 
racy will  be  supplied  by  its  attitude  toward  public 
education.  Fortunately,  the  Constitution  of  our 


Education  133 

Federal  Government  does  not  permit  of  educa- 
tional centralization,  and  so  makes  a  dull  uni- 
formity impossible.  We  shall  always  have  in- 
structive contrasts  in  systems  and  methods,  and 
with  them  a  constant  spur  to  progress.  Yet  the 
centralization  possible  within  the  limits  of  the 
state,  or  even  of  the  large  city,  has  its  dangers, 
and  it  too  often  happens  that  the  educational 
forces  of  a  considerable  community  are  controlled 
by  ignorance,  and  made  ineffective  by  deference 
to  uneducated  opinion.  Many  of  our  state  uni- 
versities and  the  public  schools  of  many  of  our 
large  cities  have  to  make  all  sorts  of  concessions 
to  the  spirit  that  insists  upon  a  narrow  practicality 
in  education,  and  that  almost  wholly  ignores  the 
real  objects  of  school  and  college  training.  State 
legislatures  are  never,  and  city  school  boards  are 
rarely,  composed  of  persons  fit  to  exercise  judg- 
ment in  technical  questions  of  education ;  yet 
these  bodies  are  constantly  engaged  in  meddle- 
some efforts  to  nullify  the  work  of  the  profes- 
sional educators  whom  they  employ,  and  to 
whom,  having  once  delegated  the  necessary  au- 
thority, they  should  leave  the  most  complete  free- 
dom of  action.  Such  matters  as  the  selection  of 


134  Little  Leaders 

teachers  and  of  text-books,  of  the  arrangement 
of  curricula  and  the  conditions  of  promotion  and 
graduation,  should,  as  a  matter  of  course,  be  left 
to  professional  educators.  When  we  consider 
the  fact  that  these  matters  are,  nevertheless,  very 
generally  controlled  by  political  boards  and  legis- 
latures, it  is  surprising  that  our  schools  and  col- 
leges should  have  made  as  creditable  a  record  as 
they  have  succeeded  in  doing.  It  is  not  long 
since  the  Governor  of  Illinois  publicly  scoffed  at 
the  best  educational  ideals  that  the  experience  of 
the  ages  has  established  ;  and  at  about  the  same 
time  a  crusade  of  ignorance,  led  by  the  news- 
papers, threatened  to  seriously  cripple  the  work 
of  public  education  in  Chicago. 

When  such  occurrences  have  to  be  chronicled, 
it  is  clear  that  democracy  has  yet  to  learn  its  most 
important  lesson.  But  it  will  not  do  to  say  that 
our  century  was  not  ready  for  the  democratic  ex- 
periment. The  analogy  between  the  individual 
and  the  nation  is  always  a  valuable  one,  and  in  ap- 
plication to  this  case  its  teaching  is  clear  that  only 
in  the  hard  school  of  experience  is  real  growth 
to  be  secured.  If  only  the  nation  were  as  quick 
as  the  individual  to  profit  by  the  teachings  of  ex- 


Education  135 

perience  !  But  the  lessons  are  so  soon  forgotten, 
the  nation  is  so  wont  to  recur  to  the  old  sicken- 
ing round  of  delusion,  folly,  and  disaster,  that 
only  the  most  sanguine  souls  can  steadfastly  re- 
sist the  promptings  of  despair  and  look  forward 
with  unabated  confidence  to  the  reign  of  reason 
and  intelligence  in  which  all  the  hopes  of  democ- 
racy must  be  centred. 


136  Little  Leaders 


THE  FUTURE  OF  AMERICAN 

SPEECH. 

THE  coming  conquests  of  the  English  language 
constitute  a  theme  much  favored  in  the  discus- 
sions of  debating  societies  and  the  orations  of  col- 
lege commencements.  With  anyone  born  to  our 
English  speech  it  must,  indeed,  be  a  matter  of 
pride  that  the  language  of  Shakespeare  should 
have  won  a  secure  foothold  in  North  America 
and  South  Africa,  in  India,  in  Australia,  and  in 
the  Isles  of  the  Sea.  But  the  pride  thus  gratified 
by  a  superficial  view  of  the  growth  already 
achieved  and  the  growth  probably  to  be  recorded 
in  the  years  to  come  is  tempered  when,  upon 
closer  observation,  we  realize  that  this  extension 
in  area  of  the  English  language  is  likely  to  have 
deterioration  in  quality  for  a  concomitant.  How- 
ever desirable  may  be  the  increased  use  of  our 
language  by  the  nations  of  the  earth,  we  cannot 
regard  with  equanimity  the  tendency  of  the  lan- 
guage, in  its  territorial  extensions,  to  assume  cor- 
rupt dialectic  forms. 


Education  137 

The  power  of  literature  to  give  fixity  to  speech 
is  very  great,  but  we  cannot  blindly  count  upon 
it  for  the  impossible.  The  language  of  Italy  was 
cast  in  definite  mould  by  the  genius  of  Dante, 
and  it  still  retains  the  impress  given  it  six  centu- 
ries ago,  but  we  must  recollect  that  this  language 
has  never  been  called  upon  to  meet  the  test  of 
transplantation  to  another  soil,  and  adoption  by  a 
mixed,  and  in  part,  therefore,  an  alien  race.  So 
the  English  language,  in  its  native  environment, 
is  still  substantially  the  language  fixed  by  Chau- 
cer and  Shakespeare,  but  observers  are  not  want- 
ing who  declare  that  the  English  language,  trans- 
planted to  the  American  continent,  is  undergoing 
radical  changes,  and  becoming  a  dialect  of  the 
parent  form  of  speech.  Of  course  we  are  not 
to  expect  anything  like  a  repetition  of  the  process 
by  which  the  Latin  language,  crossing  Alps  and 
Pyrenees,  underwent  first  corruption  and  then 
transformation.  The  solidarity  of  modern  civil- 
ization makes  that  impossible.  All  countries  hav- 
ing a  common  language  are  linked  together  by 
bonds  that  will  never  permit  the  speech  of  one 
to  become  unintelligible  to  the  inhabitants  of  the 
other. 


138  Little  Leaders 

But,  while  retaining  a  common  intelligibility, 
it  is  quite  possible  for  the  offsets  of  our  language 
to  become  so  differentiated  one  from  the  other 
that  they  may  fairly  be  described  as  dialects,  and 
this  is  a  danger  which  everyone  familiar  with 
what  is  best  and  noblest  in  our  common  literary 
inheritance  will  be  quick  to  appreciate.  We  do 
not  now  refer  to  the  incorporation  of  those  new 
words  made  necessary  by  a  new  environment, 
and  illustrated  by  the  Pacific  Coast  stories  of  Mr. 
Harte,  the  Indian  tales  of  Mr.  Kipling,  and  the 
novels  and  poems  of  Australian  writers.  Nor  do 
we  refer  to  those  developments  of  idiom  taken  on 
by  all  living  languages,  and  the  necessary  sign  of 
their  vitality.  But  we  do  refer  to  the  mushroom 
growths  of  speech  that  spring  up  everywhere 
among  us,  the  modes  of  expression  that  result 
from  mere  slovenliness  of  mind,  and  find  no  war- 
rant either  in  the  genius  of  the  language  or  in  the 
necessities  of  the  situation.  These  linguistic 
abortions  are  encouraged  by  a  press  unworthy  of 
its  function  because  unfaithful  to  its  trust,  and 
accepted  by  an  easy-going  and  uncritical  public, 
too  eager  in  its  desire  for  the  new  thing,  and  too 
heedless  in  its  tolerance  of  the  short  cut  which 


Education  139 

generally  means  incomplete  expression,  of  the 
barbarism  which  usually  defeats  the  very  purpose 
of  expression. 

The  language  that  is  spoken  by  the  people  of 
this  country  is  the  language  that  is  read  in  their 
popular  literature  —  in  their  newspapers,  maga- 
zines, and  paper-covered  novels  —  and  is  not  a 
language  in  which  they  have  reason  to  take  pride. 
A  great  share  of  the  writing  done  for  our  news- 
papers is  done  by  uneducated  persons,  and  offends 
every  instinct  of  literary  decency.  A  higher 
standard  is  offered  by  the  best  of  our  magazines, 
but  few  can  resist  the  temptation  of  a  well-known 
name,  and  any  sort  of  notoriety  is  a  passport  to 
the  pages  of  all  but  three  or  four  of  them.  The 
oldest  and  for  many  years  the  most  dignified  of 
our  reviews  has  been  degraded  to  the  level  of  the 
sensational  daily  paper,  and  offers  to  its  readers 
of  to-day  as  few  well-written  pages  as  it  offered 
of  ill-written  pages  to  its  readers  of  a  generation 
ago.  Of  the  kind  of  English  in  which  most  of 
our  popular  novels  are  written  the  less  that  is  said 
the  better.  But  we  may  remark  that  the  real- 
istic tendency  of  recent  fiction  has  to  answer, 
among  many  other  sins,  for  that  of  fastening  upon 


140  Little  Leaders 

the  minds  of  its  readers  the  grossest  solecisms  of 
uneducated  speech.  Anything  is  permissible  in 
the  conversations  of  its  characters,  for  is  it  not 
the  function  of  Realism  to  represent  people  as 
they  act  and  speak  ?  So  the  illiterate  writer  has 
only  to  select  his  types  of  characters  from  the 
uneducated  crowd,  and  is  then  free  to  pen  the 
sort  of  English  to  which  he  is  accustomed.  If, 
by  chance,  the  c  piebald  jargon  '  which  he  places 
upon  their  lips  passes  over  into  the  descriptive 
and  other  passages  in  which  the  writer  speaks  for 
himself,  the  average  reader  will  hold  the  offence 
of  little  weight,  if  it  even  attracts  his  attention. 
The  degradation  of  the  American  language 
from  the  high  standard  still  measurably  preserved 
in  the  parent  country  is  a  phenomenon  of  the 
gravest  significance.  We  are  not  now  concerned 
with  the  quibbling  about  '  Americanisms '  and 
*  Briticisms '  that  has  supplied  amusement  to  many 
ingenious  controversialists.  There  is  about  as 
much  to  say  upon  one  side  of  that  question  as 
upon  the  other,  and  the  game  appears  to  be  drawn. 
The  question  now  before  us  is  not  that  of  cer- 
tain objectionable  locutions  —  whether  their  ori- 
gin be  English  or  American ;  it  is  the  far  more 


Education  141 

serious  question  of  how  far  the  American  lan- 
guage has  become  an  inferior  dialect  of  the  En- 
glish. Those  of  our  writers  who  resent  any 
imputation  of  this  sort  usually  ignore  the  real 
question  altogether.  They  seek  to  divert  atten- 
tion from  it  either  by  childish  tu  quoque  arguments, 
or  by  resort  to  vague  generalizations  upon  the 
fluctuations  to  which  all  living  languages  are  sub- 
ject. They  eloquently  oppose  c  the  wild  flowers 
of  speech,  plucked  betimes  with  the  dew  still  on 
them,  humble  and  homely  and  touching,'  to  c  the 
waxen  petals  of  rhetoric  as  a  schoolmaster  ar- 
ranges them.'  To  the  writer  who  has  arrayed 
for  us  these  touchingly  contrasted  figures  'the 
grammarian,  the  purist,  the  pernicketty  stickler 
for  trifles,  is  the  deadly  foe  of  good  English,  rich 
in  idioms  and  racy  of  the  soil.'  That  American 
English  is,  on  the  whole,  as  good  as  any  other, 
that  its  peculiarities  are  but  the  evidences  of  a 
healthful  vitality,  is  the  sum  of  the  plea  urged  by 
these  zealous  linguistic  patriots. 

But  the  question  is  not  to  be  thus  flippantly 
disposed  of.  Dr.  Fitzedward  Hall,  who  is,  we 
must  remember,  an  American,  although  he  has 
lived  in  England  for  many  years,  replies  to  the 


142  Little  Leaders 

sort  of  apologists  above  cited  in  the  following 
emphatic  terms  :  4  With  those  who,  either  from 
denseness  of  ignorance  or  from  aesthetic  insen- 
sibility, deliver  themselves  in  this  uncritical  fash- 
ion, it  would  be  squandering  words  to  argue  :  they 
must  be  left  to  perish  in  their  pravity.'  And  he 
goes  on  to  say  :  '  More  or  less,  as  much  as  the 
language  of  Scotland,  American  English,  as  a 
whole,  has  already  come  to  be  a  dialect ;  and  day 
by  day  it  entitles  itself  more  and  more  to  that 
designation.'  These  quotations  are  taken  from 
an  article  published  by  Dr.  Hall  in  the  London 
1  Academy  '  after  it  had  been  declined  by  l  two 
American  periodicals.'  The  greater  part  of  the 
article  is  devoted  to  a  list  of l  locutions  which  go 
far  to  realize  finished  debasement,'  taken  from  a 
book  by  one  of  our  better  American  writers. 
Although  exception  may  be  taken  to  some  of  Dr. 
Hall's  illustrations,  the  majority  of  them  are 
clearly  examples  of  bad  English.  That  it  is  diffi- 
cult for  an  American  to  avoid  writing  bad  En- 
glish he  freely  admits,  and  the  passage  in  which 
the  admission  is  made,  although  somewhat  long, 
is  of  so  great  interest  that  it  deserves  to  be  repro- 
duced here  in  full. 


Education  143 

*  If  egotism  for  a  moment  is  pardonable,  no  false  shame 
deters  me  from  avowing  that,  though  I  have  lived  away 
from  America  upwards  of  forty-six  years,  I  feel,  to  this 
hour,  in  writing  English  that  I  am  writing  a  foreign  lan- 
guage, and  that,  if  not  incessantly  on  my  guard,  I  am 
in  peril  of  stumbling.  Nor  will  it  be  amiss  for  any  Amer- 
ican, when  experimenting  like  myself,  to  feel  as  I  do,  and 
never  to  relax  his  vigilance,  if  he  would  not  every  now 
and  then  reveal  himself,  needlessly  and  to  his  prejudice, 
as  an  exotic.  Not  for  five  minutes  can  he  listen  to  the 
conversation  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  or  for  that  length 
of  time  read  one  of  their  newspapers,  or  one  of  such  books 
as  they  usually  write,  without  exposure  to  the  influence 
of  some  expression  which  is  not  standard  English.  Try 
as  he  will  to  resist  this  influence,  successful  resistance  to 
it  is  well-nigh  impossible.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he  is 
indifferent  about  resisting  it,  his  fancied  English  will,  a 
thousand  to  one,  be  chequered  with  solecisms,  crudenesses, 
and  piebald  jargon,  of  the  sort  which  the  pages  of  Mrs. 
Stowe,  Mr.  E.  P.  Roe,  and  Mr.  Howells  have  rendered 
familiar.  In  short,  the  language  of  an  American  is,  all 
but  inevitably,  more  or  less  dialectal.' 

That  Dr.  Hall  speaks  with  authority  few  will 
be  bold  enough  to  dispute.  And,  although  he 
does  not  suggest  any  definite  remedy  for  the  in- 
sidious disease  that  has  attacked  our  language,  he 
clearly  believes  that  remedies  are  yet  available. 


144  Little  Leaders 

A  century  from  now,  he  says,  our  population  will 
be  several  times  that  of  Great  Britain. 

'  Circumstances  generated  by  unprecedented  combina- 
tions have  entailed  on  us  a  recognizable  dialect,  and  one 
which  is  rapidly  developing.  Whether  it  is  fated  to  re- 
main a  dialect  is  a  hazardous  speculation.  Yet,  unless 
we  chance  to  breed  a  matter  of  half  a  dozen  Shakespeares 
and  Miltons,  it  will  hardly,  without  great  purification, 
reach  the  dignity  of  a  substantive  language.  But,  be  its 
eventual  status  what  it  may,  that  which  should  especially 
weigh  with  us  is  its  unquestionable  destiny  to  serve  as  the 
mother-tongue  of  hundreds  of  millions.  Towards  the 
shaping  of  it,  so  that  our  successors  shall  do  us  credit, 
we  can  contribute  consciously.  Most  surely  it  behoves 
us,  therefore,  to  take  measures,  and  take  them  promptly, 
to  the  end  that,  so  far  as  may  prove  feasible,  its  evolution 
be  controlled  by  proficients  in  knowledge  and  taste,  and 
not  by  sciolists  and  vulgarians.' 

What  these  measures  should  be,  we  are  left  to 
determine.  Half  a  century  ago,  writing,  mutatis 
mutandis,  upon  the  same  subject,  Schopenhauer 
proposed  in  all  seriousness  that  the  State  should 
take  a  hand  in  the  matter,  and  establish  a  system 
of  linguistic  censorship  of  the  press,  with  penalties 
for  the  misuse  of  words,  for  syntactical  errors, 
and  for c  impudent  mockery  of  grammar.'  '  Is  the 
German  language  outlawed  ? '  he  exclaimed, i  too 


Education  145 

insignificant  to  deserve  the  legal  protection  en- 
joyed by  every  dung-hill  ? '  So  heroic  a  remedy 
as  this  is  hardly  within  our  reach,  and  we  must 
look  for  aid  to  educational  systems  rather  than  to 
legislatures.  By  wisely  directed  education,  and 
by  that  alone,  may  we  hope  to  come  once  more 
into  secure  possession  of  the  rich  heritage,  so 
nearly  lost,  of  the  speech  of  Shakespeare  and  of 
Tennyson.  To  accomplish  this  we  must  improve 
the  methods  of  our  elementary  education,  and  must 
make  our  higher  education  higher  still.  We  must 
strengthen  at  all  points  the  study  of  the  English 
languages  and  literature ;  we  must  insist  upon  the 
acquaintance,  from  childhood  up,  with  only  good 
models  of  style ;  we  must  make  the  proper  ex- 
pression of  thought,  in  every  department  of  work, 
an  aim  concurrent  with  that  of  acquiring  the  spe- 
cial subject-matter  of  the  study  pursued. 


146  Little  Leaders 


THE  USE  AND  ABUSE  OF  DIALECT. 

THERE  are  indications  —  not  very  marked  as  yet, 
but  still  indications  —  that  the  day  of  the  dialect 
versifier  and  story-teller  is  waning.  The  literary 
epidemic  for  which  he  is  responsible  has  raged 
with  unabated  virulence  in  this  country  for  the 
past  ten  years  or  more.  It  has  had  almost  com- 
plete possession  of  the  bric-a-brac  popular  maga- 
zine. Its  contagion  has  even  extended  to  those 
periodicals  which  we  too  fondly  fancied  to  stand 
for  the  dignities,  as  opposed  to  the  freaks,  of  lit- 
erature. At  the  other  extreme,  it  has  been  dis- 
seminated and  vulgarized  by  the  newspaper  and 
the  popular  reciter.  A  few  of  the  men  and  wo- 
men whom  we  count  as  real  forces  in  American 
letters  have  been  numbered  among  its  victims. 
But  all  epidemics  exhaust  themselves  in  time,  and 
we  are  encouraged  to  believe  that  this  one  is  nearly 
spent.  A  tabulation  of  the  contents  of  our  pop- 
ular magazines  would  now,  we  think,  show  a 
smaller  proportion  of  pages  unreadable  for  their 


Education  147 

bad  spelling  than  would  have  been  disclosed  by  a 
similar  investigation  made  two  years  ago.  The 
journalist,  having  for  a  time  done  his  best  to 
spread  the  fashion  of  dialect,  is  now  aiming  at  it 
the  shafts  of  his  dull  yet  not  ineffective  satire. 
Many  a  literary  worker  is  beginning  to  suspect 
that  to  misspell  as  many  words  as  possible  is  not 
exactly  the  noblest  of  ambitions.  Best  of  all,  the 
whole  fabric  of  realism — that  is,  of  the  crude  pho- 
tographic realism  so  noisily  trumpeted  by  its  de- 
fenders— is  crumbling  away,  to  make  room  in  due 
time,  we  trust,  for  the  true  realism  of  the  masters ; 
and  with  this  fabric  there  falls  whatever  theoret- 
ical defense  of  the  dialect  poem  or  novel  may 
heretofore  have  seemed  plausible. 

We  by  no  means  anticipate  the  complete  dis- 
appearance of  the  dialect  element  from  our  imag- 
inative literature,  nor  would  such  a  reaction  be 
desirable.  But  we  do  expect  the  time  to  come 
when  dialect  shall  occupy  its  proper  place  in  com- 
position, and  be  treated  as  a  means  rather  than 
as  an  end.  There  is  an  important  distinction 
between  the  story  written  for  the  sake  of  dialect 
and  the  use  of  dialect  for  the  sake  of  the  story ; 
the  latter  practice  is  as  excusable  or  even  praise- 


148  Little  Leaders 

worthy  as  the  former  is  reprehensible.  The  ques- 
tion is  one  between  a  writer  and  his  own  con- 
science. Let  the  story-teller  ask  himself  this 
question :  Is  it  my  purpose  to  produce  a  faithful 
yet  idealized  transcript  of  life,  with  its  joys  and 
its  sorrows,  with  its  tender  human  relationships 
and  its  grim  struggle  for  the  mastery  of  adverse 
conditions,  the  use  of  dialect  being  one  of  the  ele- 
ments necessary  to  the  representation  of  essential 
truth  ;  or  am  I  merely  taking  advantage  of  a  cur- 
rent fashion  that  tends  to  degrade  the  literary  art, 
and,  making  of  a  grotesque  orthography  the  ralson 
d'etre  of  my  work,  adding  just  enough  of  descrip- 
tion and  fancy  and  pathos  to  give  my  work  the 
verisimilitude  needed  for  it  to  pass  muster  at  all  ? 
Most  writers  have  sufficient  conscience  to  answer 
this  question  truthfully,  if  squarely  put ;  if  they 
shirk  the  answer  for  themselves,  they  may  be  sure 
that  the  public,  sooner  or  later,  will  find  it  for 
them.  And  the  ultimate  verdict  of  the  only  pub- 
lic worth  writing  for  will  never  be  favorable  to 
the  workman  who  fails  to  recognize  the  impera- 
tive obligation  of  this  higher  sort  of  conscientious- 
ness. 

When  used  with  discrimination  and  artistic 


Education  149 

restraint,  dialect  is,  of  course,  an  admissible  ele- 
ment in  both  poetry  and  fiction.  English  litera- 
ture would  be  far  the  poorer  without  the  treas- 
ures of  Scotch  dialect  preserved  in  the  poems  of 
Burns  and  the  novels  of  the  author  of  l  Waver- 
ley.'  Likewise,  we  could  ill  spare  the  work  of 
the  Provencal  poets  from  the  literature  of  France, 
of  Goldoni's  Venetian  comedies  from  that  of 
Italy,  or  of  Reuter's  Plattdeutsch  tales  from  that 
of  Germany.  In  all  these  cases,  the  work  sim- 
ply could  not  have  been  done  at  all  without  the 
employment  of  dialect ;  yet  no  one  would  ven- 
ture to  assert  that  the  exploitation  of  a  dialect 
was  the  prime  motive  that  led  to  the  composition 
of  'Tarn  O'Shanter'  or  'The  Antiquary,'  of 
1  Mireio  'or  l  II  Carnovale  di  Venezia '  or  l  Ut 
Mine  Stromtid.'  These  are  all  instances  of  a 
richly  endowed  artistic  nature  finding  expression 
in  the  medium  most  natural  for  his  purpose.  Even 
in  our  own  country,  a  similar  plea  may  be  made 
for  the  language  of  Hosea  Biglow,  or  of  Mr. 
Cable's  Creoles,  or  of  Miss  Murfree's  Tennessee 
mountaineers.  But  the  swarm  of  commonplace 
and  uninspired  scribblers  of  dialect  that  have 
descended  upon  our  periodical  press  during  the 


150  Little  Leaders 

past  decade  need  not  hope  to  find  a  safe  refuge 
in  the  shadow  of  such  really  significant  names  as 
have  been  cited  ;  their  pretensions  are  too  utterly 
without  warrant  and  their  productions  too  en- 
tirely without  justification.  Not  Lowell,  but 
4  Josh  Billings/  is  their  model  and  Great  Ex- 
ample. 

No  discussion  of  the  abuse  of  dialect  that  should 
omit  the  educational  view  would  be  adequate. 
The  corrupting  influence  that  may  hardly  be  es- 
caped by  adult  readers  is  tenfold  more  serious  in 
its  effect  upon  the  growing  mind.  The  preva- 
lence of  dialect  in  the  papers  and  magazines  that 
provide  young  people  with  most  of  their  reading 
puts  a  new  and  formidable  difficulty  in  the  way 
of  teachers  and  parents.  Even  the  books  put  into 
our  schools  as  models  for  the  guidance  of  the 
young — the  school l  readers '  themselves — often 
contain  examples  of  perverted  diction  that  can- 
not fail  to  exert  an  evil  influence  upon  the  im- 
pressionable years  of  childhood.  Upon  this  aspect 
of  our  subject,  we  cannot  do  better  than  quote 
some  pointed  observations  from  a  paper  by  Pro- 
fessor Willis  Boughton,  of  Ohio  University.  Mr. 
Boughton  says : 


Education  151 

'  For  the  past  decade  some  of  our  most  popular  period- 
icals have  been  furnishing  their  readers  with  a  weekly  or 
monthly  diet  of  dialect  stories.  A  handful  of  editors 
have  declared  that  the  people  want  such  literature,  and  it 
is  produced.  Instead  of  romances  in  cultivated  language, 
we  are  introduced  to  most  ordinary  characters  who  use 
most  ordinary  folk  lore.  The  Christmas  story,  Mr. 
Howells  asserts,  is  written  in  the  "Yankee  dialect  and 
its  Western  modifications."  Even  our  verse  is  corrupted. 
Notice  a  stanza  reproduced  from  a  leading  magazine  : 

"  I  'm  been  a  visitin'  'bout  a  week 
To  my  little  cousin's  at  Nameless  Creek, 
An'  I  'm  got  the  hives  an'  a  new  straw  hat 
An'  I'm  come  back  home  where  my  beau  lives  at." 

What  literature!  If  the  magazine,  one  of  the  greatest 
educational  factors  in  our  country,  will  tolerate  such  lan- 
guage 5  if  you  and  I  read  it,  and  smile  at  it,  and  quote 
it,  the  Cincinnati  teacher  may  be  pardoned  for  the  use  of 
language  that  shocked  Dr.  Rice.  To  preserve  the  speech 
of  a  vanishing  people,  dialect  literature  may  be  justified  ; 
but  to  propagate  such  language  is  vicious.  At  school, 
the  teacher  may  dwell  at  length  upon  the  linguistic  beau- 
ties of  the  "Village  Blacksmith";  but  on  Friday  after- 
noon some  urchin  declaims  : 

"The  Gobble-uns'  'ill  git  you 
Ef  you  do  n't  watch  out," 

and  soon  all  the  children  in  the  district  are  repeating  his 
words.  Why  the  offspring  of  even  polite  society  are  prone 
to  use  bad  English  need  be  no  longer  a  matter  of  wonder.' 


152  Little  Leaders 

4  To  propagate  such  language  is  vicious.'  The 
words  are  none  too  strong,  and  we  thank  Mr. 
Boughton  for  them,  hoping  that  the  protest  he 
raises  will  be  echoed  by  educators  everywhere. 
These  are  some  of  the  abuses  of  dialect ;  what, 
then,  are  its  uses  ?  To  what  fruitful  end  may 
we  divert  the  effort  now  worse  than  wasted  by 
the  dialect-mongers  of  our  periodical  literature  ? 
By  substituting  a  scientific  for  an  artistic  purpose, 
by  making  a  serious  study  of  dialect  instead  of 
playing  with  it.  The  facts  of  dialect  speech,  as 
distinguished  from  the  inventions  of  the  news- 
paper humorist,  are  of  great  importance  to  the 
history  of  language.  No  more  important  lin- 
guistic work  remains  to  be  done  in  this  country 
than  that  of  recording  the  thousands  of  local  vari- 
ations of  our  speech  from  what  may  be  called 
standard  English.  To  fix  these  colloquialisms 
in  time  and  place,  to  trace  them  to  their  origins, 
to  construct  speech-maps  embodying  the  salient 
facts  of  popular  usage  wherever  it  has  distinctive 
features  —  these  are  scientific  aims  of  the  worth- 
iest. Work  of  this  sort  is  being  energetically 
carried  on  by  a  constantly-increasing  number  of 
observers  in  this  country ;  but  the  ranks  still  call 


Education  153 

for  additions,  and  new-comers  will  be  heartily 
welcomed.  As  a  coordinating  agency  for  such 
scattered  contributions  to  knowledge,  the  Amer- 
ican Dialect  Society,  founded  in  1889,  is,  in  a 
quiet  way,  establishing  important  scientific  con- 
clusions. The  lay  observer  is  hardly  competent 
to  make  the  finer  distinctions  in  pronunciation 
that  come  within  the  scope  of  the  trained  phone- 
tician, but  he  can  be  extremely  useful  in  the  col- 
lection of  vocabularies.  The  Society  asks  him 
to  do  two  things  for  each  peculiar  word  or  idiom 
that  comes  to  his  notice  — l  first,  to  fix  the  fact 
that  it  occurs  in  dialect  usage  in  a  sense  differing 
from  standard  English,  and,  secondly,  to  fix  the 
local  limits  of  this  usage.'  All  such  variations 
from  the  normal l  represent  just  the  class  of  facts 
on  which  the  scientific  study  of  language  rests. 
Many  of  them  are  survivals  from  older  periods 
of  the  language ;  many  new  words  are  formed  or 
adopted  to  meet  a  real  need  arising  from  new 
conditions,  and  so  ultimately  gain  a  place  in  stand- 
ard English ;  and  many  variations  in  pronuncia- 
tion illustrate  phonetic  changes  which  are  con- 
stantly going  on  in  language  development.  The 
philologist  needs  to  know,  from  a  more  reliable 


i54  Little  Leaders 

source  than  the  ordinary  novelist  furnishes,  the 
exact  locality  where  each  word  or  phrase  is  used 
(implying,  also,  a  knowledge  of  where  it  is  not 
used ) ;  just  what  it  means  to  those  who  use  it, 
and  what  local  variations  there  are,  if  any,  in  its 
form  and  meaning ;  just  when  each  new  word 
came  in  or  old  one  went  out  of  use.'  If,  per- 
chance, our  little  sermon  on  the  use  and  abuse  of 
dialect  should  turn  even  one  misguided  realist 
from  a  grinder-out  of  dialect c  copy  '  for  the  news- 
papers into  an  exact  observer  of  local  usage  for 
the  scientific  purposes  of  the  Society,  it  will  not 
have  been  preached  in  vain. 


Education  155 


READING  AND  EDUCATION. 

IN  these  days  of  multiplied  universities  and  de- 
grees, when  a  young  man  or  woman  of  earnest 
purpose  is  rarely  so  handicapped  by  adverse  en- 
vironment as  to  be  quite  unable  to  get  the  higher 
education  in  the  academic  sense  of  that  term,  it 
is  possible  that  we  attach  too  much  importance 
to  the  culture  that  is  based  purely  upon  scholastic 
titles.  Historical  examples  without  end  prove  to 
us  that  culture  of  the  finest  type  has  been  attain- 
able outside  the  walls  of  any  institution  of  learn- 
ing, and  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the  pro- 
cess which  has  produced  self-educated  men  in  the 
past  is  equally  available  and  effective  at  the  present 
time.  Indeed,  it  may  be  urged  that  the  man  intel- 
lectually self-made,  if  his  achievement  show  him 
to  be  really  educated,  has  an  advantage  over  the 
man  who  has  found  the  ways  of  learning  smoothed 
for  him,  the  rough  places  levelled,  and  the  nat- 
ural impediments  to  progress  cleared  away  by 
other  hands  than  his  own.  It  is  he  who  best 


156  Little  Leaders 

knows  the  value  of  what  has  been  so  hardly  ac- 
quired ;  his  attainment  has  a  substance  and  a  solid- 
ity that  the  most  brilliant  of  university  careers 
may  fail  to  give.  After  all,  the  test  of  culture, 
outside  of  narrow  academic  circles,  is  not  based 
upon  such  external  things  as  degrees  and  fellow- 
ships, but  upon  capacity,  upon  evidence  of  the 
finer  issues  of  thought  and  feeling,  and  the  power 
to  quicken  other  spirits  to  those  issues. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  of  educational 
institutions  is  that  which  everyone  may  have  at 
his  door,  or  even  within  arm's  reach — a  well  filled 
set  of  book-shelves.  Having  this,  we  have,  how- 
ever socially  isolated,  the  l  means  of  getting  to 
know,  on  all  matters  which  most  concern  us,  the 
best  which  has  been  thought  and  said  in  the 
world.'  One  is  almost  ashamed  to  make  so  hack- 
neyed a  phrase  do  duty  once  more,  but  Matthew 
Arnold  seized  the  root  of  the  matter,  and  if  the 
thing  needs  to  be  repeated  at  all,  it  can  hardly  be 
done  otherwise  than  in  his  words.  Reading  is  a 
very  serious  affair,  one  of  the  most  serious  that 
there  are ;  yet  how  few  realize  both  in  thought 
and  act  its  educational  possibilities.  A  man's 
library,  assuming  it  to  be  for  use  and  not  for  dis- 


Education  157 

play,  is  a  better  index  to  his  character  than  the 
most  detailed  of  external  biographies.  Show  us 
the  man  at  work  in  his  library,  and  we  view  him 
in  his  essence,  not  in  his  seeming.  There  is  no 
greater  educational  problem  than  that  of  persuad- 
ing men  and  women  everywhere — not  merely  the 
few  favored  by  training  and  predisposition  —  to 
surround  themselves  with  books  of  the  right  sort, 
and  to  make  the  right  use  of  them.  Our  popu- 
lar educational  movements,  our  Chautauqua  cir- 
cles and  University  Extension  courses,  are  all 
working  in  this  direction,  although  rather  aim- 
lessly and  with  much  misdirection  of  energy ; 
what  we  need  is  more  persistent  and  systematic 
endeavor  —  effort  duly  elastic  and  individual  in 
adaptation  while  still  systematic  —  on  the  part  of 
all  who  are  occupied  with  the  diverse  phases  of 
the  educational  movement.  Every  teacher,  every 
librarian,  every  popular  lecturer,  every  writer  for 
magazine  or  newspaper,  can  do  something  for 
the  common  cause  by  way  of  influence ;  every 
private  individual,  in  his  own  circle  of  acquaint- 
ances, can  at  least  do  something  by  way  of  ex- 
ample. 

The  average  adult,  whose  intellectual  environ- 


158  Little  Leaders 

ment  seems  to  be  a  matter  of  choice,  is  really 
subjected  to  influences  that  are  not  easy  to  resist. 
The  modern  newspaper,  with  its  bad  writing  and 
its  vulgar  ideals,  the  popular  magazine,  with  its 
ephemeral  or  sensational  programme,  the  cheap 
book,  even  cheaper  in  its  contents  than  in  its  me- 
chanical execution  —  these  are  the  temptations 
that  beset  his  every  spare  hour,  and  deprive  him 
of  communion  with  the  great  spirits  who  stand 
ready  to  tell  him  l  the  best  which  has  been  thought 
and  said  in  the  world.'  c  Will  you  go  and  gos- 
sip with  your  housemaid  or  your  stable-boy,  when 
you  may  talk  with  queens  and  kings  ;  or  flatter 
yourself  that  it  is  with  any  worthy  consciousness 
of  your  own  claims  to  respect  that  you  jostle  with 
the  hungry  and  common  crowd  for  entree  here, 
and  audience  there,  while  all  the  while  this  eternal 
court  is  open  to  you,  with  its  society,  wide  as  the 
world,  multitudinous  as  its  days, — the  chosen  and 
the  mighty  of  every  place  and  time  ? '  None  of 
us  can  altogether  escape  the  distracting  influence 
of  the  commonplace  writing  that  on  every  hand 
insinuates  itself  into  our  acquaintance ;  yet  if  we 
content  ourselves  with  such  work,  if  we  do  not 
resolutely  reject  its  impudent  pretension  of  suf- 


Education  159 

ficiency,  we  miss  the  most  effective  means  for 
the  realization  of  our  better  selves.  Every  reader 
ought  now  and  then  to  fortify  himself  against 
temptation  by  reading  some  such  essay  as  Mr. 
Ruskin's  on  '  Kings'  Treasuries,'  or  Mr.  Mor- 
ley's  on  4  The  Study  of  Literature,'  or  Mr.  Har- 
rison's on  4  The  Choice  of  Books ' — not  for  their 
commendation  of  particular  lines  of  reading,  or 
to  blindly  acquiesce  in  their  individual  dicta,  but 
for  their  lofty  standpoint,  their  liberal  outlook, 
and  their  tonic  effect. 

The  foundations  of  the  reading  habit  are,  of 
course,  laid  in  childhood  j  and  the  responsibility 
for  these  foundations  is  one  of  the  greatest  that 
the  professional  educator  has  to  bear.  The  child 
should  be  as  carefully  guided  in  the  choice  of  his 
reading  as  the  adult  should  be  free  to  determine 
what  is  best  for  his  own  spiritual  needs.  How 
precious  are  the  years  from  six  to  sixteen,  with 
their  eager  receptivity  and  their  retentive  grasp, 
seems  to  be  but  imperfectly  understood  by  the 
directors  of  our  schools.  It  is  hardly  less  than 
criminal  to  provide  children  of  such  an  age  with 
the  namby-pamby  artificial  reading  that  is  now 
manufactured  for  their  use.  A  child's  reading 


160  Little  Leaders 

should  be  confined  to  the  very  best  literature  that 
he  is  capable  of  understanding  —  and  it  is  aston- 
ishing what  he  will  understand  if  given  a  chance. 
Nor  should  he  be  kept  upon  short  rations  for  the 
purpose  of  drill  in  vocal  expression.  Fresh  mat- 
ter is  always  better  than  old  for  discipline,  and 
the  most  vitalizing  pages  lose  their  power  for 
good  if  too  frequently  conned.  The  childish 
desire  for  new  worlds  to  conquer  is  very  strong, 
and  is  sure  to  find  vent  in  the  wrong  direction  if 
not  freely  indulged  in  the  right  one. 

The  high  school  and  college  period  of  educa- 
tion is  essentially  that  in  which  the  student  is 
trained  to  shift  for  himself.  It  is  the  period  when 
restrictions  upon  reading  must  be  relaxed,  and 
freedom  of  choice  watchfully  encouraged.  Some- 
where within  this  period  of  intellectual  adoles- 
cence there  comes  a  transitional  stage  which  tests 
all  the  training  of  the  previous  years.  The  duty 
of  those  who  are  responsible  for  the  student 
during  this  critical  period  is  rather  to  stimulate 
than  to  direct  his  reading  ;  to  encourage  him  in 
looking  beyond  the  horizon  of  his  text-books,  to 
make  it  easy  and  pleasant  for  him  to  read  in  help- 
ful lines ;  to  throw  all  sorts  of  unobtrusive  obsta- 


Education  161 

cles  in  his  path,  if  he  exhibits  any  tendency  toward 
intellectual  dissipation.  The  school  or  college 
library  is,  next  to  the  wise  instructor,  an  essen- 
tial factor  in  this  problem,  and  the  studies  of  his- 
tory and  literature,  of  the  ancient  and  modern 
languages,  are  those  upon  which  reliance  must 
mainly  be  placed  in  this  task  of  making  of  formal 
education  a  real  preparation  for  life.  We  have 
of  late  years  witnessed  a  remarkable  expansion 
in  the  scientific  departments  of  school  and  col- 
lege, and  a  greatly  increased  expenditure  for  their 
adjuncts  of  laboratory  and  museum.  The  expan- 
sion was  needed,  and  no  educator  can  intelli- 
gently begrudge  it.  But  the  group  of  studies 
which  find  in  the  library  both  museum  and  lab- 
oratory —  the  studies  which  we  rightfully  call 
humanities  and  for  which  we  thereby  claim  the 
place  of  first  importance  and  of  closest  relation- 
ship to  our  deepest  spiritual  needs  —  may  fairly 
demand  as  much  attention  and  as  large  an  expen- 
diture as  the  sciences  of  nature.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  ask  that  every  dollar  set  apart  for  scien- 
tific apparatus  shall  be  matched  by  another  dol- 
lar set  apart  for  literary  apparatus.  The  student 
of  history  or  of  literature  ought  to  have  the  use 


1 62  Little  Leaders 

of  his  own  set  of  books,  just  as  the  student  of 
chemistry  has  the  use  of  his  own  set  of  reagents. 
When  the  humanities  come  again  into  their  own, 
this  necessity  will  be  recognized  as  fully  as  the 
necessity  of  laboratory  teaching  in  chemistry  is 
now  recognized. 

Given  the  right  guidance  in  childhood,  and  the 
right  influences  during  adolescence,  the  reading 
habit  may  be  counted  upon  to  remain  a  genuine 
educational  influence  through  life.  The  import- 
ance of  such  guidance  and  such  influences  can 
hardly  be  over-estimated.  But  for  those  who 
have  missed  them,  for  those  who  in  the  future 
will  miss  them,  there  is  still  the  consoling  truth 
that  serious  aims  coupled  with  earnest  endeavor 
can  nearly  always  find  the  path  to  a  very  com- 
plete culture.  *  The  best  which  has  been  thought 
and  said  in  the  world,'  like  the  sunlight,  shines 
freely  for  all,  and  to  it  the  veriest  mole  may,  if 
he  will,  grope  his  way.  c  Reading  maketh  a  full 
man,'  and  more  than  that  no  scheme  of  formal 
education,  however  extensive,  may  accomplish. 


Education  163 


SUMMER  READING. 

THERE  are  many,  doubtless,  to  whom  the  sug- 
gestion of  a  summer  vacation  largely  devoted  to 
reading,  particularly  if  undertaken  with  profitable 
intent,  will  seem  little  better  than  a  counsel  of 
perfection.  The  strained  nerves  and  the  weary 
brain  demand,  they  will  urge,  that  whatever  weeks 
or  months  may  be  annually  snatched  from  the 
grasp  of  toil  should  be  given  up  to  recreation  in 
its  primitive  sense,  to  the  renewing  of  the  ex- 
hausted vitality,  to  the  rebuilding  of  the  wasted 
tissue.  At  such  times,  the  only  books  of  which 
they  will  hear  are  those  which  the  best  authority 
tells  us  are  to  be  found  in  running  brooks,  and 
the  only  sermons  to  which  they  are  disposed  to 
listen  are  the  mute  discourses  of  the  stones  upon 
sea-cliff  or  mountain-side.  And  there  is  undoubt- 
edly a  degree  of  tension,  reached  by  many  in  our 
feverish  latter-age,  from  which  relief  is  only  pos- 
sible upon  condition  of  a  complete,  if  temporary, 
abandonment  of  civilization  with  all  its  devices. 


164  Little  Leaders 

We  are  impelled  for  a  brief  space  to  relapse  into 
barbarism,  and,  seeking  new  strength  by  contact 
with  the  bare  earth,  to  realize  in  our  own  expe- 
rience the  myth  of  Antaeus. 

But  such  relapses  are  not  for  long,  and,  the 
first  joy  of  freedom  and  relaxation  being  at  an 
end,  the  mental  activities  quickly  reassert  their 
need  of  occupation.  The  pendulum  of  life  has 
soon  swung  all  the  way  from  the  unendurable 
strain  of  daily  recurrent  labor  to  the  equally  un- 
endurable ennui  of  prolonged  idleness.  The  pure 
joy  of  existence  may  suffice  for  the  moment,  but 
the  sense  of  vacuity  sets  in  after  awhile,  and 
imperatively  calls  for  some  form  of  diversion  that 
shall  not  leave  Nature  to  do  all  the  recreative 
work.  At  such  times,  more  forcibly  perhaps 
than  at  any  others,  books  offer  us  their  serviceable 
solace,  and  we  congratulate  ourselves  upon  the 
instinctive  foresight  that  led  us  to  provide  our- 
selves with  such  companions.  Then,  reclining 
upon  shaded  lawn  or  veranda,  upon  deck  or  sea- 
shore or  pine -clad  mountain  slope,  fortified 
against  the  intrusions  of  care,  and  at  peace  with 
all  the  world,  we  enjoy  in  equal  measure  the  min- 
istries of  Nature  and  of  Art,  as  far  removed  from 


Education  165 

ennui  as  from  toil,  and  the  discords  of  life  are 
resolved  into  the  richest  of  harmonies. 

What  books  are  best  suited  to  the  needs  of  the 
long  summer  days  ?  We  have  known  a  young 
man,  in  contemplation  of  an  ocean  voyage,  to 
take  with  him  the  '  Kritik  der  Reinen  Vernunft.' 
Luckily  there  was  a  library  on  the  ship,  and  Kant 
remained  undisturbed  at  the  bottom  of  the  trav- 
eller's trunk.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  too 
many  people  whose  idea  of  a  summer's  literary 
provision  becomes  embodied  in  a  package  of 
ephemeral  novels  of  varying  degrees  of  unreality 
or  imbecility,  and  an  armful  of  illustrated  period- 
icals. We  hardly  know  which  of  the  two  ex- 
tremes thus  illustrated  deserves  the  severer  cen- 
sure, but  if  either  case  is  to  have  our  sympathies 
it  must  be  that  of  the  Kantian  student  rather  than 
that  of  the  l  Dodo '-  laden  excursionist.  The 
former,  at  least,  has  a  rational  motive,  if  his  judg- 
ment be  woefully  at  fault ;  the  latter  is,  however 
unconsciously,  doing  his  best  to  waste  a  golden 
opportunity. 

The  rational  person  will  take  neither  Kant  nor 
4  Dodo '  to  his  place  of  summer  resort,  for  he  will 
know  that  there  is  a  grateful  mean  between  the 


1 66  Little  Leaders 

substantial  but  not  easily  digestible  quality  of  the 
one  and  the  mere  frothiness  of  the  other.  He 
will  know,  for  one  thing,  that  there  is  an  abun- 
dance of  literature  which  is  of  the  very  best, 
yet  which  makes  no  strenuous  demand  upon  the 
faculties,  which  can  hold  the  attention  without 
conscious  effort,  so  smooth  is  the  flow  and  so  har- 
monious the  form.  What  reading,  for  example, 
could  be  more  ideally  fit  for  the  long  summer 
afternoons  than  the  poetry  of  the  <  Faerie  Queene ' 
or  the  c  Earthly  Paradise,'  the  prose  of  the  c  Pen- 
tameron  '  or  4  Marius  the  Epicurean '  ?  Such 
reading  as  this  becomes  a  permanent  intellectual 
possession,  an  influence  moulding  imagination 
and  character,  and  the  retrospective  charm  natu- 
rally attaching  to  the  memory  of  a  summer  out- 
ing will  be  not  a  little  enhanced  by  association 
with  the  imperishable  beauty  of  such  works  of 
literary  art.  There  is  a  passage  in  one  of  Fitz- 
Gerald's  letters  which  embodies  the  whole  gospel 
of  summer  reading.  He  says  : 

« I  am  now  a  good  deal  about  in  a  new  Boat  I  have 
built,  and  thought  (as  Johnson  took  Cocker's  Arithmetic 
with  him  on  travel,  because  he  shouldn't  exhaust  it)  so  I 
would  take  Dante  and  Homer  with  me,  instead  of  Mudie's 


Education  167 

Books,  which  I  read  through  directly.  I  took  Dante  by 
way  of  slow  Digestion  :  not  having  looked  at  him  for 
some  years  :  but  I  am  glad  to  find  I  relish  him  as  much 
as  ever  :  he  atones  with  the  Sea  ;  as  you  know  does  the 
Odyssey  —  these  are  the  Men ! ' 

What  shall  we  do,  then,  with  what  Mr.  Rus- 
kin  calls  the  good  books  of  the  hour — telling  us 
that  '  we  ought  to  be  entirely  thankful  for  them, 
and  entirely  ashamed  or  ourselves  if  we  make  no 
good  use  of  them  ' —  if  we  are  not  to  put  them 
in  our  trunk  when  we  start  upon  our  vacation  ? 
We  have  no  disposition  to  underrate  the  useful- 
ness of  l  these  bright  accounts  of  travels,  good- 
humored  and  witty  discussions  of  questions,  lively 
or  pathetic  story-telling  in  the  form  of  novel,  firm 
fact-telling  by  the  real  agents  concerned  in  the 
events  of  passing  history.'  But  we  think  that  the 
time  for  them  is  the  hour  left  us  after  a  hard  day's 
work,  or  the  occasional  holiday,  rather  than  the 
summer's  weeks  or  months  of  continuous  rest. 
When  that  happy  season  comes  round,  we  can 
put  it  to  better  uses,  and,  if  we  are  going  to  do 
any  reading  at  all,  it  surely  offers  the  occasion  of 
occasions  for  that  close  acquaintance  with  lthe 
authors '  that  we  can  never  hope  to  make  during 


1 68  Little  Leaders 

the  ordinary  routine  of  active  life.  If  we  are  well- 
advised,  we  will  leave  the  ephemeral  and  scrappy 
literature  of  the  day  for  the  day  which  brings  it 
forth,  and  not  allow  it  to  usurp  our  attention  dur- 
ing the  only  part  of  the  year  when  we  are  really 
free  to  enter  upon  enjoyment  of  our  great  heritage 
of  Books  in  the  higher  and  better  sense.  '  Who 
would  think  of  taking  up  the  "  Faerie  Queene  " 
for  a  stopgap  ? '  while  waiting  for  the  sound  of  the 
dinner-bell,  Lamb  asks  us.  And,  to  point  the 
obverse  of  the  moral,  let  us  in  turn  ask :  Who 
would  think,  or  who  ought  to  think,  of  devoting 
the  long  summer  days  to  books  whose  final  cause 
is  to  supply  us  with  stopgaps,  and  which,  when 
put  to  other  uses,  are  as  much  out  of  place  as 
Spenser  would  be  in  the  hungry  half-hour  pre- 
ceding the  evening  repast  ? 


Education  169 


THE  SUMMER  SCHOOL. 

OBSERVERS  of  our  educational  activity  cannot  fail 
to  have  been  impressed  by  the  recent  growth  of 
the  Summer  School.  The  phase  of  educational 
work  represented  by  that  deserving  institution  at- 
tracts yearly  more  and  more  attention,  and  every 
recurrent  summer  season  offers  to  the  ambitious 
student  a  wider  choice  among  places  and  subjects. 
In  the  earlier  chapters  of  its  history  the  outcome 
of  private  initiative,  the  organized  forces  of  Amer- 
ican education  soon  perceived  the  possibilities  of 
the  Summer  School  as  a  supplementary  educa- 
tional process,  and  now  associate  themselves  un- 
equivocally with  its  work.  The  imposing  lists 
of  gatherings  more  or  less  educational  in  charac- 
ter, published  year  by  year  in  various  periodicals, 
give  some  idea  of  the  dimensions  to  which  the 
work  has  grown,  and  even  these  lists  are  rarely 
complete.  l  More  than  one  hundred  Summer 
Schools,'  we  were  told  in  the  spring  of  1895, 
'  will  be  in  active  operation  in  the  United  States 


1 70  Little  Leaders 

during  the  coming  season.'  Perhaps  the  best 
indication  of  the  extent  to  which  Summer  Schools 
have  become  an  accepted  factor  in  our  educa- 
tional work  is  afforded  by  the  Report  of  the 
United  States  Commissioner  of  Education  for 
1891—92,  published  by  the  Government  Printing 
Office.  For  this  Report,  a  special  investigation 
of  the  subject  of  Summer  Schools  was  made  by 
Dr.  W.  W.  Willoughby,  and  the  results  of  that 
investigation  may  well  be  considered  surprising 
even  by  those  fairly  familiar  with  the  subject. 

Every  new  educational  movement  finds  dis- 
senters, and  there  is  involved  in  this  growing  util- 
ization of  the  summer  months  for  educational 
purposes  a  fundamental  principle  that  cannot  be 
altogether  ignored.  There  are  some  who  will  see 
in  the  movement  merely  another  indication  of 
that  hurry  and  unrest  so  characteristic  of  Amer- 
ican life  in  its  other  phases,  and  who  will  claim 
that  our  summer  vacations  ought  to  be  devoted 
to  their  primary  purpose  of  relaxation  and  recre- 
ation. And  there  is  no  doubt  that  we  need  really 
to  rest  at  times,  to  break  the  process  of  over- 
stimulation,  to  give  our  weary  nerves  an  oppor- 
tunity to  renew  their  dissipated  energies.  The 


Education  171 

best  work  is  not,  as  a  rule,  done  by  those  who  toil 
for  the  greatest  number  of  hours  or  days,  but 
rather  by  those  who  so  shape  their  lives  as  to 
maintain  the  working  period  at  its  highest  potency. 
Yet  it  must  not  be  forgotten,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  the  truest  rest  is  not  that  of  torpor  or  leth- 
argy, but  is  rather  to  be  sought  in  variety  of  inter- 
est or  aim.  And  the  Summer  School,  carried  on 
as  it  usually  is  among  the  mountains  or  by  lake- 
side and  seashore,  means  for  the  most  of  us  so 
complete  a  change  of  environment  that  it  may 
bring  recuperation  to  the  tired  brain  even  although 
that  brain  persist  in  the  moderate  exercise  of  its 
habitual  function.  At  all  events,  the  objections 
of  the  dissenter  are  minimized,  and  need  not  be 
taken  very  seriously.  Some  sympathy  may  indeed 
be  demanded  for  the  officers  and  instructors  of 
the  Summer  School,  since  to  them,  more  nearly 
than  to  the  average  student,  the  work  done  is  a 
continuation  of  the  kind  of  work  they  have  been 
doing  all  the  rest  of  the  year,  and  the  sacrifices 
they  are  called  upon  to  make  are  not  inconsider- 
able. There  is  something  wrong  about  a  system 
which  pretends  that  nine  or  ten  months  of  work 
are  enough  for  the  teacher,  yet  which  compen- 


172  Little  Leaders 

sates  him  so  inadequately  for  that  work  as  to  force 
him  to  eke  out  his  income  by  working  on  for  the 
two  or  three  months  remaining.  As  long  as  any 
large  proportion  of  the  instruction  in  our  Sum- 
mer Schools  is  done  by  men  thus  compelled  to  do 
it,  not  only  will  the  efficiency  of  the  Summer 
School  suffer,  but  the  tone  of  the  whole  educa- 
tional profession  will  remain  lower  than  it  ought 
to  be. 

Historically,  the  American  Summer  School  be- 
gins with  the  establishment,  in  1872,  of  the  Zo- 
ological Laboratory  on  Penikese  Island,  under  the 
direction  of  Louis  Agassiz.  That  famous  school, 
which  had  but  two  sessions,  was  the  progenitor 
of  the  Chesapeake  School  of  the  Johns  Hopkins 
University,  the  Schools  at  Annisquam,  and 
Wood's  Holl,  and  the  school  of  the  Brooklyn  In- 
stitute on  Long  Island.  These  biological  schools 
form  a  group  by  themselves,  and  no  one  can 
question  the  great  importance  of  the  work  they 
have  done  in  original  research  and  the  training  of 
specialists.  Allied  to  them  are  the  schools  form- 
ing the  second  group  in  Dr.  Willoughby's  class- 
ification, described  as  4  Summer  Schools  giving 
instruction  in  single  subjects.'  Towards  this 


Education  173 

group  the  Concord  School  of  Philosophy,  opened 
in  1879,  occupies  the  historical  relation  of  the 
Penikese  Laboratory  to  the  schools  of  the  biolog- 
ical group.  The  Concord  School  had  ten  annual 
sessions,  the  last  of  them,  in  1888,  being  limited 
to  an  Alcott  memorial  service.  Of  its  several 
successors,  the  most  direct,  if  we  take  both  spirit 
and  organization  into  account,  is  the  school  con- 
ducted by  Mr.  Thomas  Davidson,  for  a  few  years 
at  Farmington,  Connecticut,  afterwards  and  still 
at  a  secluded  spot  in  Keene  Valley,  New  York, 
beautifully  situated  in  the  heart  of  the  Adiron- 
dacks.  It  is  now  called  the  Glenmore  School, 
and  is  devoted  to  the  culture  sciences.  The 
Plymouth  School  of  Applied  Ethics,  inaugurated 
in  1891,  mainly  through  the  efforts  of  Dr.  Felix 
Adler,  may  also  be  considered  here.  It  repre- 
sents the  highest  scientific  plane  yet  reached  by 
the  schools  of  this  group,  and  its  field  and  influ- 
ence have  broadened  with  every  succeeding  year 
of  its  existence.  We  have  not  space  even  to 
name  the  remaining  schools  devoted  to  special 
subjects,  conspicuous  among  which  are  the  many 
flourishing  schools  of  music  and  the  languages 
dotting  the  country  from  East  to  West.  And 


174  Little  Leaders 

we  must  also  pass  by  without  mention  the  count- 
less summer  institutes  and  other  schools  for  the 
training  of  teachers  that  are  every  year  pursuing 
their  silent  but  effective  work  of  raising  the  stand- 
ard of  the  teaching  profession  in  our  country. 

The  Chautauqua  system,  with  its  ever  broad- 
ening scope  and  its  countless  ramifications,  must 
have  a  paragraph  to  itself.  It  is  estimated  that 
more  than  one  person  in  every  hundred  of  our 
entire  population  visits  the  yearly  gatherings  of 
the  various  schools  organized  upon  the  Chautau- 
qua plan,  if  not  directly  controlled  by  its  man- 
agement. The  beginnings  of  this  system  are  to 
be  looked  for  only  about  a  score  of  years  back. 
In  1 8  74  occurred  the  first  summer  meeting  on 
the  shores  of  Lake  Chautauqua,  planned  by  Mr. 
Lewis  Miller  and  Dr.  John  H.  Vincent.  From 
this  first  meeting,  attended  by  some  six  hundred 
students  from  all  parts  of  the  country,  there  has 
sprung  the  system  of  popular  education  whose 
name  js  now  a  household  word  throughout  the 
land.  The  Chautauqua  Assembly  proper  pro- 
vides a  great  variety  of  courses  in  history,  litera- 
ture, language,  science,  and  pedagogics.  The 
College  of  Liberal  Arts,  superadded  in  1879, 


Education  175 

offers  courses  of  a  more  exacting  character,  hav- 
ing much  of  the  character  of  regular  college  work, 
and,  like  such  work,  leading  to  degrees  that  are 
not  so  lightly  bestowed  as  some  people  imagine. 
Then  there  are  the  outlying  Chautauqua  assem- 
blies, a  numerous  progeny,  held  in  attractive  spots 
scattered  all  over  the  country.  More  than  sixty 
of  these  assemblies  attest  the  fertility  of  the  fun- 
damental Chautauqua  idea  of  combining  instruc- 
tion with  recreation.  It  is  easy  to  scoff  at  the 
work  of  these  assemblies,  and  to  point  out  the 
obvious  fact  that  they  are  in  no  sense  substitutes 
for  the  colleges  proper ;  it  is  easy  to  visit  any 
one  of  them,  and  have  an  eye  for  its  vacation 
aspect  alone ;  it  is  easy,  also,  to  talk  about  scrap- 
piness  and  superficiality  ;  but  all  comment  of  this 
sort  is  beside  the  mark.  No  one  can  take  a  close 
view  of  the  Chautauqua  work  without  recogniz- 
ing in  it  a  very  shrewd  and  practical  application 
of  possible  means  to  a  highly  desirable  end ;  no 
one  can  take  a  broad  view  of  the  work  without 
seeing  that  it  is  a  factor  of  appreciable  importance 
in  our  educational  life. 

In  conclusion,  we  must  say  a  few  words  about 
the  steadily  increasing  amount  of  summer  work 


176  Little  Leaders 

undertaken  by  the  universities  themselves,  with 
the  aid  of  their  organization,  equipment,  and  sci- 
entific methods.  In  a  certain  sense,  the  Penikese 
Laboratory  of  Agassiz  should  open  this  chapter  of 
our  history,  for  it  was  the  evident  utility  of  such 
an  enterprise  that  led  to  the  organization  of  the 
Harvard  summer  courses,  which  have,  since 
1874,  formed  a  regular  department  of  the  work 
of  that  University.  Scientific  subjects  have 
mainly  occupied  these  courses,  and  the  work  has 
been  chiefly  planned  to  meet  the  needs  of  teach- 
ers. These  Harvard  courses  emphasize  the  im- 
portant principle  that  pedagogic  instruction  should 
not  be  purely  theoretical,  but  should  rather  take 
up,  although  still  with  pedagogic  intent,  some 
concrete  branch  of  knowledge,  and,  in  teaching 
its  substance,  at  the  same  time  convey  an  ac- 
quaintance with  the  methods  that  its  teachers 
should  employ.  The  University  of  Virginia  was 
also  a  pioneer  in  the  work  of  Summer  Schools, 
and  its  School  of  Law  was  started  as  early  as 
1870,  although  it  remained  in  an  embryonic  state 
until  1875.  One  institution  after  another  has 
since  fallen  into  line,  and  summer  work  is  now 
done  at  Cornell,  Yale,  Columbia,  Stanford,  and 


Education  177 

many  of  the  State  Universities  of  the  West.  The 
University  Extension  movement  is  also  taking 
possession  of  the  summer  field,  and  such  a  pro- 
gramme as  that  offered  for  the  summer  of  1895 
at  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  is  really  extra- 
ordinary in  its  scope  and  interest.  It  remained, 
however,  for  the  new  University  of  Chicago  first 
to  occupy  the  position  that  the  summer  months 
are  just  as  good  as  any  others  for  full  university 
work  in  all  departments,  and  first  to  offer  the 
example  of  a  great  institution  of  learning  open  to 
students  from  one  end  of  the  year  to  the  other. 
The  results  of  this  undertaking  all  go  to  show 
that  President  Harper  had  reason  to  attach  great 
importance  to  this  unprecedented  feature  of  the 
University  planned  by  him.  At  a  single  bound 
this  new  educational  departure  passed  from  the 
experimental  stage  to  the  stage  of  successfully 
accomplished  fact,  and  summer  education  entered 
upon  the  most  serious  phase  that  it  has  yet  known 
in  this  country. 


178  Little  Leaders 


AN  ENDOWED  NEWSPAPER, 

IN  the  retrospect  of  recent  years  there  is  no  fea- 
ture more  significant  than  that  offered  by  the 
benefactions  of  the  philanthropically  -  minded 
wealthy.  The  immense  sums  of  money  devoted, 
whether  by  bequests  or  by  gifts  inter  vivos^  to 
charitable  and  educational  purposes,  give  pause 
to  cynicism  and  blunt  the  weapons  of  the  socialist. 
There  is  some  good  in  human  nature,  after  all, 
and  great  fortunes  are  not  an  unmitigated  social 
evil.  The  wealth  thus  diverted  to  beneficent  ends 
may  not  always  have  been  well-gotten,  but  its 
application,  at  least,  is  praiseworthy,  and  the  act 
of  its  bestowal  is  a  positive  boon  to  society.  We 
do  not  say  that  this  atones  for  any  possible  dis- 
honesty of  acquisition  ;  we  do  say  that  such  be- 
stowal may  legitimately  be  considered  as  an  iso- 
lated fact,  and  judged  upon  its  own  merits.  Ex- 
isting wealth,  however  acquired,  is  a  positive 
power  for  good  or  evil ;  even  if  unfairly  gained 
by  its  present  owner,  it  is  there,  and  must  be  reck- 


Education  179 

oned  with  as  a  social  factor.  There  are  few  cases 
in  which  an  attempt  to  undo  the  injustice  of  the 
past,  as  far  as  injured  individuals  are  concerned, 
would  not  be  entirely  futile.  Had  the  late  Jay 
Gould  devised  his  estate  to  public  purposes,  it 
would  have  been  ethical  casuistry  to  frown  upon 
the  gift.  If  we  may  make  this  somewhat  pre- 
posterous supposition,  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
mankind  would  have  been  better  off  in  conse- 
quence ;  nor  can  it  be  denied,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  mankind  would  have  been  still  better  off  had 
no  such  person  lived.  The  benefaction  and  the 
personal  account  of  the  man  who  makes  it  pre- 
sent two  distinct  questions,  which  ought  not  to 
be,  as  they  so  often  are,  confused.  It  does  not 
detract  from  the  positive  value  of  the  one  that 
the  other  leans  heavily  to  the  debit  side  of  the 
balance. 

This  excursus  has  led  us  away  from  the  orig- 
inal intention  of  our  article,  which  was  simply 
that  of  indicating  a  new  outlet  for  the  wealth  of 
the  philanthropist.  We  imagine  that  many  a 
millionaire,  disposed  to  liberality,  has  been  de- 
terred by  lack  of  the  imagination  needed  in  the 
selection  of  a  suitable  object.  To  endow  a  church, 


i8o  Little  Leaders 

or  a  hospital,  or  a  college,  must  seem  a  hackneyed 
procedure,  worthy  as  such  institutions  intrinsically 
are.  To  the  millionaire  of  philanthropic  velleity, 
in  search  of  some  comparatively  novel  method  of 
benefitting  his  fellow-men,  we  would  suggest  the 
endowment  of  a  newspaper.  We  can  hardly  con- 
ceive of  a  more  civilizing  influence  than  might  be 
exerted,  over  a  city  and  country,  by  a  daily  news- 
paper of  ideal  standards  and  aims,  a  newspaper 
dependent  for  support  upon  no  political  organiza- 
tion, no  special  group  of  commercial  and  indus- 
trial interests,  no  popular  favor  of  any  kind. 

It  may  be  taken  for  granted,  in  the  present 
state  of  civilization,  that  no  such  daily  newspa- 
per would  be  likely  to  pay  its  own  expenses.  It  is 
an  admitted  fact  that  the  best  intellectual  or  artis- 
tic activity  needs  to  be  supported.  There  are 
few  exceptions  to  the  rule  that  the  best  education, 
the  best  literature,  the  best  scientific  work,  the 
best  painting,  sculpture,  music,  and  dramatic  art, 
cannot  reward  their  producers  as  they  should  be 
rewarded.  Architecture  alone,  among  the  higher 
works  of  the  intellect,  makes  sufficient  appeal  to 
the  practical  instincts  of  men  to  be  reasonably 
fruitful,  and  even  the  very  best  architecture  must 


Education  181 

be  done  for  glory  rather  than  for  pecuniary  return. 
Still,  in  all  these  cases  (dramatic  art  excepted), 
fame  continues  to  supply  the  motive  for  good 
work,  perhaps  the  best  work  that  might  in  any  case 
be  hoped  for.  But  the  desire  for  fame  alone,  and 
the  consciousness  of  doing  work  as  it  should  be 
done,  without  thought  of  material  profit,  does  not 
seem  as  yet  to  have  been  a  motive  sufficient  for 
the  production  of  anything  like  an  ideal  news- 
paper. At  best,  when  the  production  is  controlled 
by  a  single  mind  of  sound  instincts,  the  motive  is 
mixed  with  more  or  less  of  commercialism;  at 
worst,  when  the  management  is  by  a  corporation, 
the  money-getting  motive  is  unleavened  by  any- 
thing better,  and  a  newspaper  is  produced  which 
has  for  its  one  object  the  enlargement  of  circula- 
tion by  any  means  that  do  not  overstep  the  limits 
imposed  by  the  criminal  law.  That  journalism  has 
its  ethics,  that  its  exercise  is  a  trust  no  less  than 
the  exercise  of  the  legal,  or  medical,  or  teaching 
profession,  or  of  the  functions  of  public  life,  is  a 
fact  almost  lost  sight  of  in  our  modern  scramble 
for  wealth.  How  hopelessly  blunted  must  be  the 
moral  sense  of  a  man  who  can  assume  the  office 
of  a  public  teacher,  in  the  wide  sense  permitted 


1 82  Little  Leaders 

by  journalism,  with  the  deliberate  intention  of 
making  it  bring  the  largest  possible  returns,  and 
who  can  unblushingly  defend  his  course  by  plead- 
ing that  the  production  of  a  newspaper  is  a  busi- 
ness enterprise  like  any  other. 

The  prevalence  of  this  unethical  spirit  has 
produced  the  American  newspaper  of  to-day,  for 
which  every  intelligent  American  must  blush. 
That  certain  features  of  excellence,  mainly  in  the 
direction  of  prompt  and  comprehensive  news- 
gathering,  have  been  developed,  is  to  be  attributed 
rather  to  accident  than  to  meritorious  impulse. 
The  American  newspaper  publisher  has  discov- 
ered that  he  can  get  rich  by  catering  to  the  tastes 
of  the  vulgar,  and  vicious,  and  unlettered,  and 
so  snaps  his  fingers  at  clergymen,  and  teachers, 
and  'literary  fellows'  generally.  Granting  the 
immoral  postulate  from  which  he  sets  out,  his 
course  follows  logically  enough.  The  chief  of 
our  cities  illustrates  the  two  extremes  of  modern 
journalism,  and  the  argument  is  commercially 
convincing.  The  best  newspaper  in  the  United 
States  is  published  there,  and  also  the  worst ;  the 
circulation  of  each  being  inversely  as  its  desert. 

For  this  state  of  things  public  taste,  consider- 


Education  183 

ing  only  the  verdict  of  numbers,  is  of  course  re- 
sponsible, and  offers  a  certain  excuse  for  the  pol- 
icy of  not  setting  too  high  a  standard  at  once. 
What  it  does  not  excuse  is  the  policy  of  arousing 
in  humanity  the  dormant  vulgarities  and  brutali- 
ties that  civilization  is  slowly  endeavoring  to  put 
to  their  final  sleep,  but  that  are  still  restless  and 
wakeful.  Many  of  our  newspapers  are  engaged 
in  this  work  of  positive  degradation,  and  for  their 
diabolical  activity  no  condemnation  can  be  too 
emphatic.  To  the  others,  more  or  less  self- 
convicted  of  time-serving,  but  still  standing  upon 
a  mental  plane  slightly  above  that  of  the  homme 
sensuel  moyen,  there  is  some  faint  praise  to  be  given, 
at  least  of  the  sort  that  we  give  to  the  man  who 
finds  a  pocket-book  that  he  might  keep  unde- 
tected, and  who  restores  it  to  the  owner.  It  is, 
of  course,  only  the  barest  decency  to  refrain  from 
employing  the  worst  methods  of  our  worst  jour- 
nalism, but  it  is  something  to  save  even  that  rel- 
ative form  of  virtue  from  the  general  wreck  of 
worthy  ideals. 

It  is  because  of  these  considerations ;  because 
most  of  our  newspapers  slight  the  real  inter- 
ests of  civilized  society  for  the  sake  of  parti- 


184  Little  Leaders 

sanship,  vulgar  personalities,  and  subjects  that  no 
healthy  mind  needs  or  cares  to  know  very  much 
about ;  because,  in  the  words  of  the  late  Mr.  Low- 
ell, the  press  of  the  day  l  is  controlled  more  than 
ever  before  by  its  interests  as  a  business  rather 
than  by  its  sense  of  duty  as  a  teacher,  and  must 
purvey  news  instead  of  intelligence ' ;  because, 
to  sum  it  all  up,  the  influence  of  such  a  press 
upon  the  national  character  must  be  incalculably 
bad,  that  we  have  made  our  serious  suggestion 
to  the  ambitious  millionaire.  As  an  object- 
lesson  in  journalism,  the  existence  in  a  commun- 
ity like  New  York  or  Chicago  of  a  paper  devoted 
to  the  real  interests  of  the  city  and  nation  of  its 
origin,  uncontrolled  by  counting-room  influences, 
able  to  keep  its  readers  in  touch  with  the  best 
thought  of  the  world,  giving  to  art  and  science  and 
literature  their  due  prominence  in  its  columns, 
unflinchingly  standing  for  honest  government  and 
the  purity  of  private  morals, —  the  very  existence 
of  such  a  paper  would  mean  much,  although  its 
readers  should  be  outnumbered  ten  to  one  by 
those  of  lewd  sheets  of  the  baser  sort.  It  could 
not  fail  in  time  to  react  upon  the  journalism  of 
the  country  at  large,  and  would  offer  a  standing 


In  Memoriam  185 

protest  against  the  methods  now  current.  It 
would  steadily  find  its  way  into  the  family,  and 
prove  a  potent  influence  in  shaping  the  men  and 
women  of  the  future.  Indeed,  the  most  serious 
aspect  of  the  present  problem  is  that  offered  by 
the  influence  of  newspapers  upon  the  young. 
Upon  this  aspect  the  New  York  c  Evening  Post ' 
puts  no  undue  emphasis  when  it  says  :  c  The  ris- 
ing curiosity,  which  is  in  young  people  the  most 
important  instrument  of  mental  growth,  is  not 
only  turned  wholly  away  from  the  serious  and 
healthy  side  of  American  life,  from  sound  politics, 
from  wholesome  literature,  from  art,  science,  in- 
dustry, but  is  concentrated  with  hideous  eager- 
ness on  the  national  sewers  and  pesthouses  and 
dungheaps,  until  the  whole  of  life  becomes  a 
filthy  jest.'  The  endowment  of  a  great  news- 
paper, with  suitable  provision  for  its  management 
by  a  body  of  highly  educated,  cultivated,  and  con- 
scientious men,  would  prove  a  work  of  wider- 
reaching  beneficence  than  the  endowment  of  a 
great  university. 


IN  MEMORIAM 


CONSERVATION. 

Aber  der  Erdgeist  wurde  lacheln  und  sagen  :  'Die 
Quelle,  aus  der  die  Individuen  und  ihre  Krafte  fliessen, 
ist  unerschopflich  und  unendlich  wie  Zeit  und  Raum  : 
denn  jene  sind,  eben  wie  diese,  Formen  aller  Erscheinung, 
Sichtbarkeit  des  Willens.  Jene  unendliche  Quelle  kann 
kein  endliches  Maass  erschopfen  :  daher  steht  jeder  im 
Keime  erstickten  Begebenheit,  oder  Werk,  zur  Wieder- 
kehr  noch  immer  die  unverminderte  Unendlichkeit  offen. 
In  dieser  Welt  der  Erscheinung  ist  so  wenig  wahrer  Ver- 
lust  als  wahrer  Gewinn  moglich.1 

—  Schopenhauer,  W.  a.  W.  u.  V.,  III.,  jj. 

THEY  pass  away  beyond  the  horizon's  bourne 
That  dimly  rings  us  round ;  from  out  our  view 
They  vanish,  starlike  souls,  nor  any  clue 

Remains  to  track  their  orbits,  and  we  mourn. 

Life,  once  so  fair,  now  of  their  glory  shorn, 
Unbeaconed  by  their  light,  grows  dark  of  hue, 
And  sullen  now  the  vault  that  erst  was  blue 

Lowers,  its  radiance  and  its  grace  outworn. 

Yet  at  our  grief  the  Spirit  of  the  Earth 
But  smiles,  saying :  c  To  me  are  death  and  birth 
One  thing ;  I  dwell  not  in  the  world  of  space 
And  time ;  my  power  is  boundless  to  replace 
What  I  destroy ;  then  fear  not  any  dearth 
Of  stout  torch-bearers  in  the  soul's  swift  race.' 


ALFRED  TENNYSON. 

IN  the  most  memorable  words  ever  written  by  a 
poet  upon  the  subject  of  his  art,  Marlowe  speaks 
of  the  unattainable  ideal  that  still  hovers  before 
the  poet's  vision,  whatever  the  beauty  he  may 
have  succeeded  in  fixing  upon  the  page,  of  the 

*  One  thought,  one  grace,  one  wonder,  at  the  least, 
Which  into  words  no  virtue  can  digest.' 

By  the  critic,  no  less  than  the  poet,  this  difficulty 
is  felt  when  he  seeks  to  digest  into  words  the 
varied  thoughts  and  emotions  that  have  resulted 
from  years  of  communion  with  the  spirit  of  some 
great  master  of  literature,  when  he  endeavors  to 
gather  into  the  focus  of  concise  expression  all  the 
wonder  and  the  love,  all  the  gratitude  and  the 
reverence,  that  have  grown  with  the  years,  with 
the  renewed  study  of  familiar  works,  and  with 
the  fresh  joy  of  acquaintance  with  new  ones. 
But  the  delight  that  there  is  in  praising  (to  use 
Landor's  phrase),  however  inadequate  the  utter- 
ance, and  the  desire  to  bear  some  sort  of  witness 


190  Little  Leaders 

to  a  spiritual  influence  that  has  chastened  the 
passions  and  ennobled  the  ideals,  often  impels  to 
speech  where  silence  might  be  the  fitter  tribute. 
It  would  indeed  be  difficult  within  these,  or 
any  reasonable  limits,  adequately  to  express  Ten- 
nyson's claim  upon  the  grateful  remembrance  of 
his  fellow  men,  or  to  estimate,  in  other  than  the 
most  general  terms,  the  magnitude  of  the  loss  that 
has  made  this  one  of  the  most  fatal  months  of  the 
century.  That  he  was  the  greatest  English  poet 
of  his  age  is  a  fact  so  beyond  the  reach  of  cavil 
that  it  seems  hardly  worth  taking  the  trouble  to 
state.  In  the  whole  of  English  literature  there 
are  but  the  names  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton  and 
Shelley  worthy  to  be  mentioned  with  his,  and 
the  literature  of  the  world  can  add  but  few  others 
to  the  list  of  such  immortals.  Tennyson  was 
much  more  than  the  poet  of  the  Victorian  era, 
just  as  Virgil  was  far  more  than  the  poet  of  the 
Augustan  age.  The  Englishman,  like  the  Roman, 
was  one  of  the  few  supreme  masters  of  poetic 
expression,  and  in  that  fact  is  the  assurance  of 
an  influence  equally  enduring.  We  may  freely 
admit  that  he  did  not,  like  Pindar,  soar  to  the 
empyrean,  nor,  like  Dante,  put  upon  record  an 


In  Memoriam  191 

age  of  human  history ;  that  he  did  not,  like 
Shakespeare,  sound  all  the  depths  of  the  soul, 
nor,  like  Hugo,  control  both  the  thunders  and 
the  lightnings.  We  may  admit  all  this,  but  it 
still  remains  true  that  he  gave  a  faultless  expres- 
sion to  a  wide  range  of  noble  thoughts ;  and  no 
higher  praise  is  known  to  literary  criticism. 

In  the  astonishing  vitality  of  his  genius,  Ten- 
nyson stands  alone  among  our  great  poets.  From 
the  publication  of  the  volume  of  1842  to  this 
very  year  of  his  death  —  a  full  half-century  —  no 
other  poetic  force  acting  in  our  literature  has 
been  comparable  to  his.  The  work  of  his  old 
age  does  not  suffer  in  comparison  with  the  work 
of  his  earlier  years  ;  we  cannot  point  to  any  par- 
ticular period  of  his  life  and  say  that  he  was  then 
at  his  prime.  The  poet  of  the  second  "  Locks- 
ley  Hall "  was  as  truly  at  his  prime  as  the  poet 
of  the  first.  Indeed,  there  is  about  some  of  the 
late  poems  a  beauty  that  seems  almost  unearthly, 
the  evidence  of  a  prophetic  vision  clarified  by 
age,  and  placing  him  not  only  with  the  artists  but 
with  the  seers.  That  4 Vision  of  the  World' 
dimly  revealed  to  his  youth  took  ever  with  the 
advancing  years  an  outline  more  defined,  and  his 


192  Little  Leaders 

gaze  penetrated  more  and  more  deeply  into  the 
heart  of  the  universe. 

'  Upon  me  flashed 
The  power  of  prophesying,' 

sings  his  own  Tiresias,  and  we  cannot  refrain 
from  finding  a  personal  utterance  in  the  phrase, 
as  well  as  in  this  other : 

*  But  for  me, 

I  would  that  I  were  gathered  to  my  rest, 
And  mingled  with  the  famous  kings  of  old, 
On  whom  about  their  ocean-islands  flash 
The  faces  of  the  Gods.' 

The  prayer  has  now  been  granted  him  ;  yet  at 
this  time  of  parting, 

'When  that  which  drew  from  out  the  boundless  deep 
Turns  again  home,' 

we  cannot  quite  control  our  sorrow,  or  refrain 
from  feeling  that c  sadness  of  farewell '  which  he 
expressly  urged  should  have  no  place  in  our  hearts. 
The  sense  of  loss  is  too  recent  and  too  great.  In 
the  calmer  after-days,  perhaps,  we  may  remember 

that 

<  Men  must  endure 
Their  going  hence  even  as  their  coming  hither,' 

we  may  acquiesce  in  the  view  that  c  ripeness  is 
all,'  and  that  Tennyson  was  ripe  for  death  as  few 


In  Memoriam  193 

men  ever  are ;  we  may  take  heart  again  when 

we  think  that 

The  song  that  helped  our  father's  souls  to  live, 
And  bids  the  waning  century  bloom  anew,* 

is  ours  forever  in  all  its  imperishable  beauty. 

And  how  wonderfully  rich  and  varied  is  the 
legacy  that  Tennyson  has  left  us  !  Let  us  indi- 
cate a  few  of  its  more  salient  characteristics, — 
remembering  all  the  while  that  in  whatever  aspect 
we  view  the  poems,  they  constitute  as  a  whole 
the  most  highly-finished  body  of  work  of  like 
volume  in  our  literature.  In  dealing  with  the 
facts  of  external  nature,  they  show  a  minuteness 
and  a  delicacy  of  observation  that  cannot  receive 
sufficient  praise.  Tennyson's  skies  and  winds 
and  seas,  his  mountains  and  fields,  his  trees  and 
rocks,  his  birds  and  flowers,  are  described  with 
unerring  accuracy  of  sound  and  color  and  season. 
It  has  been  the  experience  of  many  a  reader  of 
•Tennyson  to  come  upon  some  descriptive  verse 
that  has  seemed  at  variance  with  ordinary  observ- 
ation, and  afterwards  to  see  exactly  that  aspect 
of  nature  revealed  in  fact.  Mr.  Swinburne  offers 
an  illustration  of  this  experience.  He  is  speak- 
ing of  a  verse  of  l  Elaine/ 


194  Little  Leaders 

« And  white  sails  flying  on  the  yellow  sea.' 
and  says : 

1 1  could  not  but  feel  conscious  at  once  of  its  charm, 
and  of  the  equally  certain  fact  that  I,  though  cradled  and 
reared  beside  the  sea,  had  never  seen  anything  like  that. 
But  on  the  first  bright  day  I  ever  spent  on  the  eastern 
coast  of  England  I  saw  the  truth  of  this  touch  at  once, 
and  recognized  once  more  with  admiring  delight  the  sub- 
tle and  sure  fidelity  of  that  happy  and  studious  hand. 
There,  on  the  dull  yellow  foamless  floor  of  dense  discol- 
ored sea,  so  thick  with  clotted  sand  that  the  water  looked 
massive  and  solid  as  the  shore,  the  white  sails  flashed 
whiter  against  it  and  along  it  as  they  fled  :  and  I  knew 
once  more  the  truth  of  what  I  had  never  doubted  —  that 
the  eye  and  the  hand  of  Tennyson  may  always  be  trusted, 
at  once  and  alike,  to  see  and  to  express  the  truth.' 

Tennyson's  intimate  familiarity  with  the  best 
literature  of  the  world  is  conspicuous  in  his  work, 
yet  an  uncritical  reader  gets  but  an  imperfect  idea 
of  the  poet's  range  among  the  classics  of  the  past. 
So  entirely  has  he  made  his  own  the  thought  of 
his  predecessors,  so  complete  has  been  the  pro- 
cess of  assimilation,  that  it  would  require  a  closer 
analytical  study  than  has  yet  been  made  to  indi- 
cate, with  any  kind  of  fulness,  his  indebtedness 
to  others.  And,  of  course,  indebtedness  in  this 
sense  ceases  to  be  a  real  obligation,  for  it  has 


In  Memoriam  195 

always  been  the  prerogative  of  genius  to  restate, 
in  fresh  and  beautiful  forms  of  expression,  the 
world's  older  thought,  thus  giving  it  renewed  cur- 
rency and  force.  The  work  of  illustrating  this 
phase  of  Tennyson's  genius  is  still  to  be  accom- 
plished, and  will  call  for  so  rare  a  combination  of 
scholarship  and  sympathetic  insight  that  it  may 
long  remain  undone.  In  a  fragmentary  way,  it 
has  been  attempted,  with  provisional  success,  by 
a  number  of  writers.  Mr.  Van  Dyke's  studies 
of  c  Milton  and  Tennyson '  and  l  The  Bible  in 
Tennyson '  are  efforts  in  this  direction.  In  the 
latter  of  these  studies  we  read  :  4  The  poet  owes 
a  large  debt  to  the  Christian  Scriptures,  not  only 
for  their  formative  influence  upon  his  mind  and 
for  the  purely  literary  material  in  the  way  of  illus- 
trations and  allusions  which  they  have  given  him, 
but  also,  and  more  particularly,  for  the  creation 
of  a  moral  atmosphere,  a  medium  of  thought  and 
feeling,  in  which  he  can  speak  freely  and  with 
assurance  of  sympathy  to  a  very  wide  circle  of 
readers.'  Mr.  Van  Dyke  illustrates  this  thesis 
by  many  examples.  Of  Tennyson's  debt  to  the 
Greek  and  Latin  classics,  much  yet  remains  to 
be  said.  Such  brief  poems  as  the  verses  4To 


196  Little  Leaders 

Virgil,'  or  the  4  Frater  Ave  atque  Vale/  inscribed 
to  Catullus,  might  almost  be  made  the  subject  of 
separate  studies ;  and  none  but  a  profound  scholar 
could  unravel  the  close  texture  of  the c  Lucretius,* 
and  indicate  the  inspiration  of  its  every  phrase. 
Upon  the  idyllic  side  of  his  genius,  Mr.  Stedman 
has  made  a  careful  study  of  the  relations  between 
Tennyson  and  Theocritus,  possibly  attaching  too 
much  importance  to  this  aspect  of  the  English 
poet,  yet  doing  his  work  with  insight  and  thorough- 
ness. But  the  study  of  what  we  may  call  Ten- 
nyson's allusiveness,  or  better,  perhaps,  his  liter- 
ary ancestry,  has  possibilities  that  are  practically 
inexhaustible,  and  we  may  as  well  leave  the  sub- 
ject at  this  point. 

A  word  remains  to  be  said  of  Tennyson's  so- 
cial and  ethical  ideals,  of  his  philosophy  of  life. 
It  has  been  too  much  the  fashion  to  speak  of  him 
as  merely  reflecting  the  temper  of  the  Victorian 
epoch.  That  he  has  done  this  is  true  enough, 
but  it  is  also  true  that  he  has  done  much  more 
than  this.  His  outlook  (at  least  since  the  c  In 
Memoriam '  period)  has  extended  far  beyond  the 
limits  of  his  age,  and  has  grown  wider  and  wider 
with  the  advancing  years. 


In  Memoriam  197 

*What  hast  thou  done  for  me,  grim  Old  Age,  save 
breaking  my  bones  on  the  rack  ?  * 

he  asks  in  his  latest  volume  of  verse ;  and  his  an- 
swer is  ready : 
'  I  have  climbed  to  the  snows  of  Age,  and  I  gaze  at  a 

field  in  the  Past, 
Where  I  sank  with  the  body  at  times  in  the  sloughs 

of  a  low  desire, 
But  I  hear  no  yelp  of  the  beast,  and  the  Man  is  quiet 

at  last 

As  he  stands  on  the  heights  of  his  life  with  a  glimpse 
of  a  height  that  is  higher.  * 

The  matter  of  his  song  is  that  which  poetry  has 
found  fit  in  all  ages,  and  the  song  reflects,  not 
merely  the  aspirations  of  a  race,  but  those  of  all 
mankind.  The  domestic  affections  and  the  sanc- 
tity of  the  home,  a  patriotism  not  narrowed  into 
selfish  disregard  of  other  nations,  and  a  religious 
feeling  too  broad  to  be  fettered  by  any  creeds,  and 
too  profound  to  be  agitated  by  the  surface  cur- 
rents of  thought, —  these  are  some  of  his  themes. 
A  conservative  of  the  finest  type,  he  was  no  re- 
actionary, set  upon  barring  the  steps  of  progress. 
A  champion  of  the  existing  order  only  as  that 
order  embodies  the  hard-earned  fruits  of  the  long 
struggle  for  light  and  justice,  which  is  England's 


198  Little  Leaders 

proudest  title  to  a  place  in  the  foremost  page  of 
history,  his  eye  was  ever  keen  to  perceive  cthe 
vision  of  the  world  and  all  the  wonder  that  should 
be,'  and  his  mind  ever  alert  in  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  always,  in  any  age  not  hopelessly  stag- 
nant, c  the  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to 
new.'    The  liberty  which  is  not  license,  and  the 
reasonable  orderliness  of  life  which  accepts  law 
without  charing,  and  which  is  alone  made  really 
possible  by  its  acceptance  of  law  — c  acting  the 
law  we  live  by  without  fear,' — this  is  the  social 
ideal  which  he  has  persistently  proclaimed  for 
more  than  half  a  century.    The  lesson  of  l  Love 
and  Duty,'  that  l  all  life  needs  for  life  is  possible 
to  will,'  and  the  lesson  of  the  Wellington  ode, — 
« Not  once  or  twice  in  our  fair  island-story, 
The  path  of  duty  was  the  way  to  glory : 
He,  that  ever  following  her  commands, 
On  with  toil  of  heart  and  knees  and  hands, 
Thro'  the  long  gorge  to  the  far  light  has  won 
His  path  upward,  and  prevail' d, 
Shall  find  the  toppling  crags  of  Duty  scaled 
Are  close  upon  the  shining  table-lands 
To  which  our  God  Himself  is  moon  and  sun,' — 

are  repeated  again  and  again  in  his  work,  until  we 
find  them  in  c  Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years  After' : 


In  Memoriam  199 

« Follow  you  the  Star  that  lights  a  desert  pathway,  yours 

or  mine; 
Forward  till  you  see  the  highest  Human  Nature  is  divine. 

*  Follow  Light,  and  do  the  Right  —  for  man  can  half 

control  his  doom  — 

Till  you  find  the  deathless  Angel  seated  in  the  vacant 
tomb.' 

The  picture  of  the  poet's  last  hour  will  long  re- 
main engraved  upon  our  memory.  The  midnight 
time,  the  full  harvest  moon  streaming  in  over  the 
Surrey  hills  and  flooding  the  chamber  with  light, 
the  august  head,  the  features  calm  save  for  lips 
that  murmured  —  what  other  words  so  fit  ?  — 
*  Fear  no  more  the  heat  o*  the  sun, 

Nor  the  furious  winter's  rages,'  — 
the  faces  of  the  mourners  stricken  with  grief  and 
awe  as  that  great  soul  faded  l  into  the  unknown,' 
—  nothing  could  have  been  more  impressive ; 
nothing  could  have  added  to  the  solemn  pathos 
of  the  scene.  '  Quiet  consummation  have '  was 
doubtless  the  unspoken  prayer  of  those  who  loved 
him  best ;  of  the  other  verse  — l  And  renowned 
be  thy  grave '  —  thought  need  hardly  have  been 
taken ;  for  England  could  offer  nothing  less  to  the 
poet  so  lately  the  greatest  of  her  living  sons,  than 
a  place  beneath  the  arches  of  Westminster  Abbey. 


200  Little  Leaders 


ERNEST  RENAN. 

WHILE  the  mortal  remains  of  Tennyson  found 
their  final  resting-place  in  the  abode  of  England's 
mighty  dead,  the  remains  of  Renan,  provisionally 
interred  in  Montmartre,  were  but  awaiting  the 
necessary  legislative  action  to  be  carried  in  state  to 
the  Pantheon.  It  was  a  singular  fatality  that  sim- 
ultaneously plunged  both  England  and  France 
into  mourning,  each  for  the  greatest  of  its  recent 
writers.  For  the  position  of  Renan  as  the  first 
Frenchman  of  letters  after  the  death  of  Hugo  was 
incontestable.  And  yet  how  different  the  paths 
by  which  the  Frenchman  and  the  Englishman 
attained  immortality !  The  one  addressed  the 
world  solely  in  verse;  the  other,  exclusively  in 
prose.  The  one  reached  truth  by  the  intuitive 
processes  of  the  poet ;  the  other,  by  the  minute 
and  laborious  investigations  of  the  man  of  science. 
This,  at  least,  is  what  the  visible  work  of  the  two 
men  reveals,  yet  perhaps  the  difference  is  not  so 
great  as  it  seems :  perhaps  it  is  to  be  largely  ex- 


In  Memoriam  201 

plained  by  the  fact  that  one  chose  to  record  both 
the  operations  and  the  results,  while  the  other 
gave  expression  to  the  results  only. 

In  Renan  we  see  exemplified  the  highest  type 
of  the  modern  critical  spirit,  yet  his  work  pre- 
sents at  the  same  time  that  nice  balance  of  emo- 
tion and  intellect  too  often  destroyed  by  erudition. 
With  him,  neither  history  nor  philosophy  was 
allowed  to  grow  arid,  for  the  springs  of  feeling 
never  ran  dry.  It  is  this  that  has  given  him  a 
hold  upon  contemporary  thought  unshared  by 
others  of  equal  scholarship.  He  found  the  world 
of  men  intensely  interesting,  and  he  contrived  to 
make  his  readers  share  the  interest,  however 
seemingly  forbidding  the  gateway  by  which  he 
approached  the  study  of  human  affairs.  It  was 
by  the  gateway  of  philology  that  he  chose  to 
make  the  approach ;  but  the  philologist,  in  his 
view,  must  also  be  linguist,  historian,  archaeolo- 
gist, artist,  and  philosopher.  Upon  a  foundation 
of  the  minutest  and  most  conscientious  study  of 
philological  details  he  built  up  the  history  of  the 
past,  and  made  it  real  to  us  because  of  the  un- 
failing sympathies  that  went  with  the  work,  and 
because  c  le  vif  sentiment  des  epoques  et  des 


202  Little  Leaders 

races,'  the  possession  of  which  he  attributed  to 
Thierry,  was  at  least  equally  his  own. 

The  history,  and  especially  the  religious  his- 
tory, of  primitive  peoples  was  the  principal  sub- 
ject of  his  study,  and  the  great  work  to  which 
most  of  his  life  was  given  was  a  history  of  the 
origins  of  Christianity,  supplemented  by  a  history 
of  the  people  of  Israel.  This  work  he  lived  to 
complete  in  both  parts ;  the  first,  in  seven  vol- 
umes, was  finished  many  years  ago ;  of  the  sec- 
ond, three  volumes  had  appeared  at  the  time  of 
his  death,  and  the  remainder  was  ready  for  pub- 
lication. We  see,  even  in  our  own  day,  how 
much  clerical  antagonism  is  aroused  by  the  scien- 
tific study  of  the  history  of  Christianity  ;  but  the 
feeling  excited  thirty  years  ago,  when  the  first 
part  of  Renan's  great  work  was  published,  was  far 
more  general  and  more  bitter  than  anything  that 
has  been  witnessed  of  late.  That  first  part  was 
the  famous  c  Vie  de  Jesus,'  a  book  having  some 
slight  faults  of  taste,  but  on  the  whole  so  beau- 
tiful and  so  reverent  that  we  can  only  wonder  at 
the  bigotry  which  assailed  it.  l  Why  do  we  write 
the  life  of  the  gods  if  not  to  make  men  love  the 
divine  that  was  in  them,  and  to  show  that  this 


In  Memoriam  203 

divine  lives  yet  and  will  ever  live  in  the  heart  of 
humanity  ? '  But  clericalism  was  a  force  that 
had  to  be  reckoned  with  in  the  France  of  1863. 
It  was  only  the  year  before,  that,  for  a  reference 
to  Jesus  of  almost  Apostolic  reverence,  contained 
in  Kenan's  opening  lecture  as  professor  of  Semi- 
tic languages  at  the  College  de  France,  his  lec- 
ture-room had  been  closed  by  the  government, 
to  remain  so,  as  far  as  Renan  was  concerned,  for 
no  less  than  seventeen  years. 

The  religious  intolerance  that  assailed  Renan 
during  the  years  of  his  early  fame  has  not  yet 
wholly  subsided,  although  it  has  adopted  of  late 
more  covert  modes  of  attack,  seeking  to  weaken 
his  influence  by  discrediting  his  reputation  as  a 
scholar,  or,  exaggerating  the  sentimental  side  of 
his  character,  to  suggest  that  he  is  not  to  be  taken 
very  seriously  in  anything.  Matthew  Arnold  was, 
and  is  still,  attacked  in  a  very  similar  way  by  En- 
glish orthodoxy,  and,  although  his  scholarship  was 
not  comparable  with  that  of  Renan,  he  was  as 
clearly  in  the  right  upon  all  the  essentials  of  the 
discussion.  Both  men  possessed  the  art  of  being 
playfully  serious  ;  both  had  shafts  of  the  keenest 
irony  at  their  command  j  and  both  contrived  to 


204  Little  Leaders 

produce  in  their  heavier-witted  assailants  the  same 
sort  of  exasperation.  Yet  readers  of  l  Literature 
and  Dogma '  and  i  God  and  the  Bible '  do  not 
need  to  be  reminded  of  how  wholly  Arnold's 
influence  was  exerted  in  favor  of  the  religious 
temper  and  of  genuine  religious  belief.  How 
eloquently  Renan  has  acted  as  the  spokesman  of 
religious  feeling  may  be  illustrated  by  many  pas- 
sages. He  has  the  Voltairean  weapons  at  his 
command,  but  he  does  not  turn  them  against  re- 
ligious beliefs.  c  Voltaire  makes  sport  of  the 
Bible,'  he  says,  'because  he  has  no  comprehen- 
sion of  the  primitive  productions  of  the  human 
mind.  He  would  have  made  sport  of  the  Vedas 
as  well,  and  should  have  made  sport  of  Homer.' 
It  is  precisely  the  possession  of  the  historic  sense 
that  gives  to  Renan's  treatment  of  religion  a  seri- 
ousness that  no  one  would  now  dream  of  attach- 
ing to  Voltaire's.  Here,  for  example,  is  a  brief 
but  weighty  statement  upon  this  subject : 

'  False  when  they  seek  to  demonstrate  the  infinite,  or 
to  give  it  bounds,  or  to  make  it  incarnate,  if  I  may  use 
the  expression,  religions  are  true  when  they  affirm  it. 
The  gravest  errors  mingled  by  them  with  that  affirmation 
count  for  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  importance  of 
the  truth  which  they  proclaim/ 


In  Memoriam  205 

And  the  following  passage  gives  condensed  ex- 
pression to  the  whole  of  Kenan's  religious  teach- 
ing: 

'  I  have  thought  to  serve  religion  by  transporting  it  to 
the  region  of  the  unassailable,  away  from  special  dogmas 
and  supernatural  beliefs.  When  these  crumble  away  re- 
ligion must  not  crumble  with  them,  and  perhaps  the  day 
will  come  when  those  who  reproach  me,  as  for  a  crime, 
with  making  this  distinction  between  the  imperishable 
basis  of  religion  and  its  transient  forms  will  be  glad  to 
take  refuge  from  brutal  attacks  within  the  very  shelter 
that  they  have  scorned.' 

Like  all  men  in  whose  psychical  organization 
feeling  has  its  full  share,  Renan  was  a  man  of 
moods,  although  not  to  so  pronounced  an  extent 
as  Carlyle  and  Mr.  Ruskin.  Like  those  English 
contemporaries  a  teacher  in  the  highest  sense  of 
the  term,  he  is  also  like  them  in  the  fact  that  his 
teaching  does  not  present  absolute  consistency. 
Then  the  constant  necessity  of  assuming  points 
of  view  other  than  his  own,  forced  upon  him  by 
the  study  of  those  primitive  peoples  to  whose  life 
and  thought  he  gave  the  largest  share  of  his  atten- 
tion, developed  in  him  a  certain  form  of  the  dra- 
matic instinct,  evidences  of  which  may  be  found 
in  his  historical  work  no  less  than  in  the  philo- 


206  Little  Leaders 

sophical  dramas  of  his  later  years.  Both  the  facts 
above  noted  have  been  fruitful  in  misunderstand- 
ings, to  say  nothing  of  those  other  misunder- 
standings that  always  result  from  a  dulness  of 
perception  in  matters  of  the  most  refined  literary 
art.  To  seize  the  exact  shade  of  meaning  is  often 
essential  to  any  sort  of  comprehension  of  Renan's 
work,  and  his  irony  is  at  times  so  delicate  that  a 
dull  reader  will  often  take  it  for  sober  earnest.  It 
has  been  stated  more  than  once,  for  example,  that 
the  tendency  of  Renan's  teaching  is  towards  a 
material  and  even  sensual  view  of  life.  To  one 
who  has  really  penetrated  his  meaning  and  caught 
the  essential  spirit  of  his  work  as  a  whole,  no 
judgment  could  be  more  grotesquely  false  than 
this.  We  have  mentioned  Carlyle,  and  in  one 
point  Renan's  philosophy  of  life  comes  close  to 
that  of  the  Sage  of  Chelsea.  What  is  the  object 
of  life  ?  what  its  inmost  purpose  ?  Both  men  ask 
these  questions  again  and  again,  and  the  answers 
of  both  are  not  dissimilar.  Carlyle  tells  us  many 
times  that  we  have  no  right  to  happiness ;  that 
something  far  higher  —  namely,  blessedness  — 
should  be  the  goal  of  our  endeavor.  When  Renan 
exclaims, l  II  ne  s'agit  pas  d'etre  heureux,  il  s'agit 


In  Memoriam  207 

d'etre  parfait,'  what  is  this  but  the  same  doctrine  ? 
Material  well-being  is  indeed  with  most  men  a 
necessary  condition  for  the  realization  of  their 
higher  selves,  but  it  must  never  be  taken  as  an 
end.  Material  ameliorations  of  the  human  lot 
4  have  no  ideal  value  in  themselves,  but  they  are 
the  conditions  of  human  dignity  and  the  progress 
of  the  individual  towards  perfection.'  Again  he 
says :  c  The  wisdom  of  Poor  Richard  has  always 
seemed  to  me  a  poor  enough  sort  of  wisdom.' 
Such  a  conception  of  life  is  simply  immoral. 
1  What  matters  it  to  have  realized,  at  the  close 
of  this  brief  life,  a  more  or  less  complete  type  of 
external  felicity  ?  What  really  matters  is  to  have 
thought  much  and  loved  much,  to  have  looked 
with  steadfast  gaze  upon  all  things,  to  dare  criti- 
cise death  itself  in  the  dying  hour.'  And  then, 
in  one  of  those  eloquent  passages  of  which  Renan 
was  as  great  a  master  as  ever  put  pen  to  paper, 
and  that  appeal  so  powerfully  to  the  intellect  be- 
cause they  enlist  the  emotions  upon  their  side,  he 
breaks  into  this  beautiful  rhapsody  : 

1  Heroes  of  the  unselfish  life,  saints,  apostles,  recluses, 
cenobites,  ascetics  of  all  ages,  sublime  poets  and  philoso- 
phers whose  delight  was  in  having  no  heritage  here  below  } 


208  Little  Leaders 

sages  who  went  through  life  with  the  left  eye  fixed  upon 
earth  and  the  right  eye  upon  heaven  ;  and  thou  above  all, 
divine  Spinoza,  who  chosest  to  remain  poor  and  forgotten 
the  better  to  serve  thy  thought  and  adore  the  Infinite,  how 
much  better  you  understood  life  than  those  who  take  it 
to  be  a  narrow  problem  in  self-interest,  the  meaningless 
struggle  of  ambition  or  of  vanity !  It  had  doubtless  been 
better  to  make  your  God  less  of  an  abstraction,  not  set 
upon  heights  so  dim  that  to  contemplate  him  strained 
the  vision.  God  is  not  alone  in  the  sky,  he  is  near  each 
one  of  us  ;  he  is  in  the  flower  pressed  by  your  feet,  in  the 
balmy  air,  in  the  life  that  hums  and  murmurs  all  about, 
most  of  all  in  your  hearts.  Yet  in  your  sublime  exalta- 
tion how  much  more  clearly  do  I  discern  the  super-sensual 
needs  and  instincts  of  humanity,  than  in  those  colorless 
beings  upon  whom  the  ray  of  the  ideal  never  flashed,  and 
whose  lives  from  their  first  day  to  their  last,  were  un- 
folded, precise  and  trim,  like  the  leaves  of  a  book  of  ac- 
counts ! ' 


In  Memoriam  209 


HIPPOLYTE  ADOLPHE  TAINE. 

THE  death  of  Taine  took  from  the  world  a 
writer  clearly  the  foremost  among  Frenchmen  of 
letters  after  the  loss  of  Renan.  There  are  some, 
indeed,  who  would  have  claimed  for  him  the 
highest  place  even  during  the  lifetime  of  the  great 
philologist  and  religious  historian.  For  excel- 
lence of  style,  all  would  probably  have  conceded 
to  Renan  a  higher  place  than  to  Taine,  but  for 
knowledge,  for  industry,  for  the  orderly  marshall- 
ing of  facts,  and  for  the  exercise  of  a  profound 
influence  upon  the  thought  of  his  age,  one  might 
have  claimed  with  much  show  of  reason  that  the 
author  of  c  Les  Origines  de  la  France  Contem- 
poraine '  was  of  like  stature  with  the  author  of 
4  L'Histoire  des  Origines  du  Christianisme.'  Both 
men  were  brilliant  exemplars  of  the  scientific 
method  in  historical  criticism,  and  both  were  sin- 
gularly free  from  the  spirit  of  provincialism  that 
has  characterized,  in  a  notable  degree,  so  many  of 
the  best  French  writers.  In  the  work  of  the  one 


210  Little  Leaders 

as  of  the  other,  there  is  no  more  striking  feature 
than  its  generous  recognition  of  foreign,  especially 
German,  scholarship;  than  its  catholic  outlook 
upon  the  world  of  thinkers,  and  its  readiness  to 
accept  the  best  that  was  offered,  holding  the  Re- 
public of  the  intellect  to  be  an  organization  of 
more  real  and  enduring  significance  that  any 
political  or  racial  group  of  the  forces  that  make 
for  solidarity  among  men. 

As  regards  versatility,  while  it  is  possibly  un- 
fair to  say  that  Taine  had  a  wider  range  than 
Renan,  it  is  still  true  that  his  activity  found  ex- 
pression in  a  greater  variety  of  forms.  History, 
literature,  philosophy,  and  art  had  in  him  an  inter- 
preter of  insight  and  sagacity.  In  each  of  these 
fields  he  showed  himself  a  master,  and  made 
important  contributions  to  thought.  We  might 
almost  mention  travel  as  a  fifth  among  these,  for 
he  was  one  of  the  keenest  of  observers,  and  the 
records  of  his  sojourn  in  England,  in  Italy,  and 
in  the  Pyrenees,  belong  to  the  small  class  of  books 
of  travel  really  instructive  and  of  permanent  value. 
That  he  kept  active,  even  when  at  home,  the 
faculty  of  the  thoughtful  traveller,  is  made  evi- 
dent by  his  l  Notes  sur  Paris.'  In  this  book,  dis- 


In  Memoriam  211 

guised  under  the  name  of  a  certain  M.  Grain- 
dorge,  he  illustrated  anew  the  objectivity  of  his 
critical  standpoint,  and  earned  for  himself  a  grati- 
tude not  altogether  unmixed. 

The  various  manifestations  of  Kenan's  activity 
had  philology  for  a  starting-point,  and  his  work 
was  thus  given  the  unity  that  comes  from  a  fun- 
damental subject  common  to  its  separate  parts. 
1  The  true  philologist,'  he  said, l  must  be  linguist, 
historian,  archaeologist,  artist,  and  philosopher  at 
once.'  The  unity  of  Taine's  work,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  based  upon  method  rather  than  upon  sub- 
ject. Few  writers  have  ever  developed  so  early, 
and  kept  so  consistently  in  view,  a  distinctive 
method  of  critical  investigation.  His  life-work 
was  an  endeavor  to  establish  criticism  upon  a  sci- 
entific basis,  to  provide  it  with  axioms  and  pos- 
tulates, to  give  it  a  certainty  approximating  to  that 
of  a  mathematical  demonstration.  This  endeavor 
was  never  absent  from  his  work,  whether  it  was 
engaged  with  ancient  historians  or  modern  phil- 
osophers, with  Italian  art  or  English  literature, 
with  the  French  life  of  to-day  or  the  French  life 
of  the  Revolutionary  epoch.  Taine's  critical 
method  has  excited  much  controversy,  and  few 


212  Little  Leaders 

have  been  willing  to  give  it  acceptance  in  its  en- 
tirety. In  its  application,  it  broke  down  more 
than  once,  yet  its  fruitfulness  is  no  less  evident 
than  the  fact  that  it  could  not  accomplish  all  that 
its  author  claimed.  The  tendency  of  modern 
criticism  is  unquestionably  towards  a  scientific 
method  ;  in  history  and  philosophy  it  has  already 
reached  such  a  basis ;  that  in  art  and  literature  it 
will  eventually  come  to  such  a  basis  we  may 
hardly  doubt.  Taine's  work,  whatever  its  short- 
comings, moved  with  the  main  current  of  pro- 
gress, and  quickened  that  current  in  its  flow. 

Taine's  work  in  art  criticism  is  mainly  con- 
tained in  the  five  small  volumes  that  were  the 
immediate  fruit  of  his  professorship  at  the  Paris 
'  Ecole  des  Beaux-Arts.'  These  books  are  deli- 
cate in  style  and  penetrating  in  thought.  They 
treat  art,  not  as  a  matter  of  technique,  but  as  a 
factor  in  the  history  of  culture.  The  '  Voyage 
en  Italic '  also  has  many  passages  of  the  subtlest 
sort  of  art  criticism.  In  philosophy,  Taine  made 
his  debut  with  a  work  upon  '  Les  Philosophies 
du  XlXme  Siecle  en  France,'  an  attack  upon 
the  Philosophieprofessoren  that  must  have  delighted 
Schopenhauer,  if  he  chanced  to  read  it.  The 


In  Memoriam  213 

impersonal  subject  of  Taine's  attack  was  eclecti- 
cism, the  philosophical  method  —  if  we  may  call 
it  a  method  —  aptly  described  by  one  of  Taine's 
biographers  as  4  that  rhetorical  spiritualism  which 
in  the  eyes  of  the  authorities  had  the  advantage 
of  giving  no  umbrage  to  the  clergy,  in  the  eyes 
of  thinkers  the  disadvantage  of  tripping  airily  over 
the  difficulties  which  it  undertook  to  clear  up  and 
do  away  with,  or  else  of  evading  them  altogether.' 
Personally  the  attack  was  mainly  upon  Cousin, 
the  leader  of  the  eclectics,  who  took  his  revenge, 
some  years  later,  by  successfully  opposing  the 
bestowal  of  a  special  Academy  prize  upon  the 
famous  4  Histoire  de  la  Litterature  Anglaise.' 
Taine's  principal  philosophical  work  was  his 
treatise  4De  PIntelligence,'  characterized  by  him- 
self as  '  1'ouvrage  auquel  on  a  le  plus  reflechi,' 
and  published  at  a  much  later  date  than  the  one 
previously  described.  Although  a  quarter-cen- 
tury has  elapsed  since  the  work  was  written,  and 
although  the  period  has  been  one  of  remarkable 
activity  in  experimental  psychology  and  philo- 
sophical criticism,  the  book  remains  one  of  the 
best  and  most  instructive  discussions  of  the  sub- 
jects that  we  possess.  Taine's  philosophical 


214  Little  Leaders 

standpoint  is  often  stated  as  that  of  a  follower  of 
Hegel  and  Spinoza,  but  he  has  himself  stated 
that  his  special  indebtedness  is  rather  to  Mon- 
tesquieu and  Condillac. 

It  is  in  his  treatment  of  literature  that  the  pe- 
culiarities of  Taine's  critical  method  become  most 
apparent.  His  first  publication  of  any  import- 
ance was  a  work  on  *  Lafontaine  et  Ses  Fables,' 
and  in  this  book  we  find  fully  developed  his  the- 
ory of  race  and  environment  as  the  essentially 
determining  factors  in  literary  production.  In  the 
4  Essai  sur  Tite-Live  *  these  principles  of  criti 
cism  were  applied  a  second  time.  They  found 
their  most  thorough -going  exemplification  in 
4  L'Histoire  de  la  Litterature  Anglaise,'  and  the 
opposition  they  encountered  has  mainly  taken  this 
work  as  the  objective  point  of  attack.  When 
Ste.-Beuve  suggested  that  the  work  should  have 
been  called  c  L'Histoire  de  la  Race  et  de  la  Civ- 
ilization Anglaises  par  la  Litterature '  he  gave  a 
succinct  description  of  Taine's  method.  That 
method  consists,  when  applied  to  the  study  of  a 
whole  literature,  in  analyzing  the  conditions  of 
soil  and  climate  under  which  the  literature  was 
produced,  the  prevalent  political  and  social  con- 


In  Memoriam  215 

ditions  that  attended  its  development,  and  the 
ideal  tendencies  of  the  race  that  gave  it  birth. 
The  method,  in  its  application  to  the  individual, 
takes  further  account  of  his  special  circumstances, 
of  his  ancestry,  his  place  of  birth,  and  his  educa- 
tion, and  of  the  particular  tendencies  of  the  age 
into  which  he  was  born.  The  whole,  or  nearly 
the  whole,  problem  is  one  of  heredity  and  envir- 
onment; individuality,  in  the  sense  of  spontaneous 
or  incalculable  manifestations  of  power,  finds  little 
place  in  this  scientific  system ;  genius,  in  what- 
ever spiritual  isolation  it  may  seem  to  appear,  is 
really  the  necessary  product  of  forces  whose  origin 
we  may  trace  and  whose  effects  we  may  deter- 
mine with  considerable  accuracy.  This  theory 
of  literature,  we  need  hardly  say,  has  not  met 
with  general  acceptance,  in  spite  of  the  life-long 
advocacy  given  it  by  Taine.  The  persistence, 
the  learning,  and  the  eloquence  with  which  he 
defended  it  have  not  proved  convincing,  although 
they  have  made  it  impossible  for  us  wholly  to 
ignore  the  factors  whose  influence  upon  literary 
production  Taine  believed  to  be  paramount.  To 
win  acceptance,  a  scientific  method  must  show 
itself  productive  of  similar  results  when  employed 


2i6  Little  Leaders 

by  many  different  observers,  and  it  must  fulfil 
the  supreme  test  of  enabling  us  to  forecast  the 
future  with  certainty.  Tried  by  the  first  of  these 
tests,  the  method  has  already  been  found  want- 
ing; that  it  will  meet  the  second  there  is  no  good 
reason  to  believe.  Whatever  future  the  method 
may  have  will  be  found  in  its  application  to  the 
general  course  of  national  literary  developments. 
It  will  never  foretell  the  individual  manifestations 
of  genius,  as  it  never  fully  accounted  for  such  phe- 
nomena as  they  occur  in  the  past.  For  that  task 
we  shall  need  a  deeper  psychology  than  Taine,  or 
any  other  thinker  of  the  present  century,  has  had 
at  his  command.  But  the  fact  that  we  cannot 
accept  Taine's  literary  method  should  not  pre- 
vent us  from  giving  full  credit  to  the  many  bril- 
liant qualities  of  the  work  in  which  it  had  its 
most  forcible  expression.  For  Taine's  work,  with 
all  its  defects,  is  a  better  book  than  has  yet  been 
produced  upon  the  whole  of  our  literature  by  any 
one  to  the  manner  born.  Every  man  has  his 
limitations,  and  they  sometimes  appear  most  un- 
expectedly ;  in  the  finest  of  critical  writing  we 
come  upon  such  grotesque  vagaries  as  Taine's 
estimate  of  Tennyson,  and  Arnold's  estimate  of 


In  Memoriam  217 

Shelley.  We  accept  these  things  as  we  do  the 
spots  on  the  sun's  disc,  and  do  not  for  that  say 
that  the  light  is  but  darkness.  Had  Taine  been 
an  English  writer,  we  should  have  been  surprised 
at  the  infrequency  in  his  work  of  defective  sym- 
pathies and  untenable  literary  judgments.  When 
we  reflect  that  to  know  our  literature  he  had  first 
to  learn  our  language,  surprise  gives  place  to  won- 
der, and  we  think,  not  of  the  few  cases  in  which 
he  has  failed  to  grasp  the  significance  of  our  writ- 
ers, but  of  the  many  whom  he  has  discussed  with 
penetrating  sympathy  and  deep  discernment.  We 
think,  for  example,  of  his  treatment  of  Swift, 
whom  no  critic,  English  or  foreign,  has  better 
understood  than  he ;  we  think  of  his  treatment 
of  the  Elizabethan  dramatists,  and  ask  if  it  be 
possible  that  Voltaire  lived  but  a  century  before. 
The  work  of  Taine's  latest  years  will  probably 
be  accounted  the  greatest  of  his  life.  The  writ- 
ing of c  Les  Origines  de  la  France  Contempo- 
raine  '  was  begun  about  twenty  years  ago.  Dur- 
ing that  period  we  have  had,  at  intervals  of  a  few 
years,  c  L'Ancien  Regime,'  dealing  with  the  an- 
tecedent causes  of  the  Revolution ;  *  La  Revo- 
lution,' in  three  volumes ;  and  the  first  of  the  two 


218  Little  Leaders 

volumes  in  which  the  author  proposed  to  deal 
with  the  Napoleonic  period  and  its  influence  upon 
nineteenth  century  France.  This  great  work  is 
open  to  criticism  on  the  score  of  its  unfairness  to 
the  ideas  and  the  leaders  of  the  Revolution ;  it 
undoubtedly  exaggerates  the  merits  of  the  old 
order  of  things,  and  as  undoubtedly  fails  in  doing 
justice  to  the  moral  forces  that  made  the  Revo- 
lution triumphant  for  years,  with  all  Europe 
armed  against  it.  But  in  spite  of  these  short- 
comings the  work  gives  us  a  more  comprehensive 
array  of  facts  and  a  more  scientific  sifting  of  ev- 
idence than  has  been  given  us  by  any  previous 
historian  of  the  subject.  The  legend  of  the  Rev- 
olution can  never  again  be  what  it  was  before 
Taine's  merciless  exposition  of  its  intimate  his- 
tory. As  for  the  Napoleonic  legend,  Taine  has 
given  that  its  coup  de  grace ;  he  has  put  Napoleon 
upon  record  for  the  brigand  that  he  was,  and  once 
for  all  voiced  the  sane  judgment  of  posterity  upon 
his  character  and  his  career.  The  concluding 
volume  of  this  great  historical  work,  left  nearly 
finished  at  his  death,  was  designed  by  the  author 
1  to  treat  of  the  church,  the  school,  and  the  fam- 
ily, describe  the  modern  milieu,  and  note  the  facil- 


In  Memoriam  219 

ities  and  obstacles  which  a  society  like  our  own 
encounters  in  this  new  milieu?  A  dying  man 
can  have  no  greater  consolation  than  the  con- 
sciousness of  having  completed  the  work  of  his 
life;  and  it  is  pleasant  to  think  that  Taine's  last 
hours,  like  those  of  Renan,  were  solaced  by  this 
reflection. 


220  Little  Leaders 


GUSTAV  FREYTAG. 

GUSTAV  FREYTAG,  who  died  at  Wiesbaden,  where 
he  had  lived  in  retirement  since  1879,  has  been, 
on  the  whole,  the  most  conspicuous  figure  in  the 
German  literature  of  the  half-century  now  nearly 
ended,  and  of  his  contemporaries  among  belletris- 
tic  prose-writers,  not  more  than  half  a  dozen  — 
Reuter,  Auerbach,  and  Scheffel  among  the  dead, 
Herren  Spielhagen,  Heyse,  and  Dahn  among  the 
living  —  can  claim  a  rank  comparable  with  his. 
The  life-work  upon  which  his  reputation  rests 
was  practically  done  during  the  quarter-century 
between  1855  and  1880,  and  of  late  years, 
although  not  wholly  inactive,  he  has  appeared  a 
figure  of  the  past  rather  than  of  the  present.  But 
his  death  seems  none  the  less  a  shock,  and  his 
loss  will  be  deeply  mourned  by  the  country  of 
which  he  so  honored  the  literature,  and  which 
stands  to-day  in  greater  need  than  ever  of  the 
social  ideals  inculcated  by  his  works. 

Freytag  was  born  at  Kreuzberg,  in  Silesia, 


In  Memoriam  221 

July  13,  1816,  thus  living  nearly  to  complete 
his  seventy-ninth  year.  The  son  of  a  physician, 
he  received  his  gymnasial  training  at  Oels,  and 
continued  his  studies  at  the  Universities  of  Bres- 
lau  and  Berlin.  Teutonic  philology  was  his  spe- 
cial subject,  and  his  thesis  for  the  doctorate, 
offered  in  1838,  was  enitled  c  De  Initiis  Scenicae 
Poeseos  apud  Germanos.'  The  years  1839  — 
1846  were  spent  at  Breslau  as  a  privat-docent. 
In  1847  ne  married  a  lady  of  rank  and  wealth, 
removed  to  Dresden,  and  shortly  thereafter  to 
Leipzig,  where  he  engaged  in  the  editorial  con- 
duct of  c  Die  Grenzboten.'  His  connection  with 
this  periodical  was  maintained  (with  an  intermis- 
sion from  1 86 1  to  1867)  until  1870.  He  had 
meanwhile  (1867)  become  a  liberal  member  of 
the  Nord-Deutscher  Reichstag.  When  the  war 
of  1870  came,  he  joined  the  staff  of  the  Crown 
Prince,  and  remained  in  the  service  up  to  Sedan. 
In  that  year  also  he  became  associated  with  the 
new  weekly  paper  l  Im  Deutschen  Reich.'  The 
loss  of  his  wife  in  1873,  a  subsequent  marriage 
followed  by  a  second  bereavement,  and  his  re- 
moval to  Wiesbaden,  constitute  the  remaining 
facts  of  external  interest  in  his  life. 


222  Little  Leaders 

Freytag's  literary  activity  began  during  his 
years  as  a  decent  at  Breslau,  with  a  volume  of  lyr- 
ical poems,  and  four  dramas  — l  Die  Brautfahrt,' 
'Der  Gelehrte,'  'Die  Valentine,'  and  'Graf 
Waldemar.'  Two  other  dramas,  'Die  Journal- 
isten'  (1854)  and  'Die  Fabier'  (1859),  com- 
plete the  list  of  his  writings  for  the  stage,  although 
in  his  '  Technik  des  Dramas,'  published  many 
years  later,  he  was  to  do  dramatic  art  an  even 
greater  service  than  that  of  producing  so  accept- 
able and  healthful  a  stage-play  as  '  Die  Journal- 
isten.'  This  discussion  of  the  principles  of  dra- 
matic art,  recently  translated  into  English,  is  one 
of  the  most  valuable  of  modern  contributions  to 
the  subject  with  which  it  deals,  and  has  the  added 
weight  of  coming  from  a  highly  successful  writer 
of  plays. 

Freytag's  greatest  work,  the  novel  '  Soil  und 
Haben,'  well  known  to  English  readers  as  '  Debit 
and  Credit,'  appeared  in  1855,  and  at  once  won 
for  its  writer  the  most  cordial  recognition  from 
all  discerning  critics,  although  there  were  not 
lacking  those  who  saw  in  the  work  the  apotheo- 
sis of  philistinism.  Deliberately  putting  aside  the 
romantic  ideals  of  contemporary  German  novel- 


In  Memoriam  223 

ists,  the  author  of 4  Soil  und  Haben'  made  of  the 
merchant  type  the  centre  of  interest,  and  the 
world  of  commerce  that  in  which  the  scenes  were 
laid.  Realism  of  the  good  honest  sort  dominates 
this  work,  which  depicts  with  unsurpassed  fidelity 
the  manners  of  a  provincial  town.  Romantic 
elements,  such  as  the  episode  of  the  Polish  insur- 
rection, are  not  lacking,  but  they  are  strictly  sub- 
ordinated to  the  controlling  idea  of  the  novel, 
which  is  that  of  rehabilitating  in  the  eyes  of  the 
novel-reader  those  types  of  character  which  he  is 
too  apt  to  set  lightly  aside  as  prosaic,  although 
they  form  the  bone  and  sinew  of  every  modern 
nation  well  advanced  in  the  ways  of  civilization. 
That  commercial  integrity  is  as  fine  a  thing  as 
military  glory,  that  the  virtues  of  sobriety,  pa- 
tience, perseverance,  devotion  to  the  task  at  hand, 
and  the  performance  of  the  humblest  duties  just 
because  they  are  duties,  are  among  the  worthiest 
objects  of  endeavor — these  are  the  lessons  of  the 
work,  not  too  obtrusively  inculcated,  but  every- 
where underlying  its  structure.  So  genuine  a 
piece  of  fiction  is  not  often  met  with,  or  one  that 
will  so  well  bear  scrutiny. 

'Die  Verlorne  Handschrift,'  published  in  1864, 


224  Little  Leaders 

following  the  first  novel  at  an  interval  of  nearly 
ten  years,  is  less  obviously  a  masterpiece  than 
*  Soil  und  Haben,'  yet  it  must  always  occupy  a 
high  rank  among  the  best  products  of  German 
fiction.  The  story  is  that  of  a  university  pro- 
fessor, a  large  part  of  whose  life  is  spent  in  the 
search  for  a  manuscript  of  Tacitus,  which  he  has 
reason  to  believe  is  still  extant.  His  fate  may 
be  compared  to  that  of  Saul  the  son  of  Kish,  for, 
while  the  manuscript  eludes  his  pursuit,  he  finds 
instead,  and  wins  for  his  wife,  a  very  charming 
woman.  The  book  abounds  in  admirable  pas- 
sages descriptive  of  life  in  a  university  town  and 
at  the  court  of  a  petty  German  prince.  The 
author  does  not  gild  the  commonplace  as  success- 
fully as  in  '  Soil  und  Haben,'  and  his  attempt  to 
be  humorous  must  be  reckoned  a  distinct  failure. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  work  abounds  in  fine, 
even  eloquent,  passages,  among  which  the  occa- 
sional characterizations  of  Tacitus  are  the  most 
impressive.  These,  however,  are  the  work  rather 
of  the  essayist  and  historian  than  of  the  novelist, 
and  our  enjoyment  of  them  has  little  to  do  with 
our  interest  in  the  story.  The  underlying  pur- 
pose of  '  Die  Verlorne  Handschrift '  is  the  exal- 


In  Memoriam  225 

tation  of  the  scholar's  life,  at  the  expense  of  more 
popular  ideals,  just  as  the  purpose  of  c  Soil  und 
Haben '  is  the  glorification  —  if  we  may  use  so 
strong  a  word  —  of  the  even  less  romantic  life  of 
the  honest  merchant.  These  two  ideals,  surely 
among  the  worthiest  that  can  be  urged,  were  and 
are  peculiarly  needed  in  Germany,  where  the 
unworthy  ideals  of  militarism  and  the  aristocracy 
are  still  opposed  to  them,  and  still  have  a  stronger 
hold  upon  the  nation  than  in  most  other  civilized 
countries. 

The  books  thus  far  enumerated,  together  with 
the  series  of  l  Bilder  aus  der  Deutchen  Vergang- 
enheit'  (1859-1862)  and  the  biography  of  his 
friend  Karl  Mathy  (1870),  complete  the  list  of 
Freytag's  works  up  to  the  period  of  the  War  of 
1870.  The  outcome  of  that  conflict,  so  import- 
ant to  every  German  in  its  political  significance, 
must  be  reckoned  among  the  influences  that 
shaped  the  literary  activity  of  the  novelist's  re- 
maining years.  The  most  ambitious  of  all  his 
undertakings  is  that  of  which  the  execution  was 
begun  soon  after  1870,  and  which  has  repre- 
sented the  greater  part  of  his  literary  activity  since 
that  date.  It  was  during  the  course  of  the  War 


226  Little  Leaders 

that  the  plan  of  *  Die  Ahnen '  suggested  itself  to 
his  mind,  and  the  first  person  to  whom  the  pro- 
ject was  confided  was  the  Crown  Prince.  The 
scope  of  the  proposed  work  was  thus  defined  in 
the  dedication : 

*  This  work  is  to  contain  a  series  of  freely  invented 
tales,  in  which  are  related  the  destinies  of  one  family.  It 
begins  with  ancestors  of  an  early  time,  and  shall  (if  the 
author  retain  his  vigor  and  his  interest  in  the  work)  be 
gradually  brought  down  to  the  latest  descendant,  a  hearty 
fellow  who  is  now  going  about  under  the  light  of  the 
German  sun,  without  concerning  himself  very  much 
about  the  deeds  or  trials  of  his  forefathers.  The  book 
aims  to  contain  poetic  fiction, —  and  by  no  means  a  "his- 
tory of  culture." 

With  these  introductory  words  may  be  placed  the 
other  words  appended  to  the  last  volume  of  the 
series : 

'  The  author  of  "  Die  Ahnen  "  will  be  gratified  if  the 
reader  will  consider  the  work  as  a  symphony,  in  whose 
eight  parts  a  melodic  theme  is  varied,  carried  out,  and 
interwoven  with  others,  in  such  a  manner  that  all  the 
parts,  taken  together,  form  a  unit.' 

The  eight  sections  of c  Die  Ahnen '  were  pub- 
lished in  six  volumes,  between  1872  and  1880. 
The  first  volume, c  Ingo  und  Ingraban,'  contains 
two  episodes,  both  placed  in  Thuringia,  and  deal- 


In  Memoriam  227 

ing  respectively  with  the  fourth  and  eighth  centu- 
ries, with  the  Germanic  struggle  against  Roman 
domination  and  the  later  struggle  of  the  Franks 
against  the  encroaching  Slavs.  '  Das  Nest  der 
Zaunkonige'  (1874)  deals  with  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury and  the  reestablishment  of  the  imperial  power 
by  Henry  II.  'Die  Briider  vom  Deutschen 
Hause'  (1875)  brings  us  to  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, to  the  crusades,  chivalry,  and  Frederick  II. 
'Marcus  Konig'  (1876)  is  concerned  with  the 
period  of  the  Reformation.  '  Die  Geschwister ' 
(1878)  consists  of  two  parts,  l  Der  Rittmeister 
von  Alt-Rosen,'  placed  just  after  the  Thirty 
Years'  War,  and  '  Der  Feldcorporal  bei  Mark- 
graf-Albrecht,'  placed  in  the  times  of  Frederick 
William  I.  of  Prussia.  'Aus  einer  Kleinen  Stadt' 
(1880)  brings  us  down  to  the  Napoleonic  inva- 
sion and  the  German  national  uprising  of  1813. 
To  this  tale  is  added  a  c  Schluss,'  in  which  the 
latest  descendant  of  Ingo  becomes  a  liberal  editor 
and  political  idealist  of  our  own  times.  German 
fiction  has  few  works  equal  to  '  Die  Ahnen '  in 
symmetry  of  plan  and  excellence  of  execution, 
and  no  student  of  the  literature  can  afford  to 
leave  the  series  unread. 


228  Little  Leaders 

The  temper  in  which  Freytag  wrote,  not  only 
1  Die  Ahnen,'  but  his  other  books  of  fiction  as 
well,  may  be  illustrated  by  a  l  thought '  which  he 
contributed  as  a  sort  of  motto  to  the  English 
translation  of  l  Die  Verlorne  Handschrift '  made 
a  few  years  ago.  'An  efficient  human  life  does 
not  end  upon  earth  with  death ;  it  persists  in  the 
disposition  and  acts  of  friends,  as  well  as  in  the 
thoughts  and  activities  of  the  nation.'  This  sense 
of  the  ideal  continuity  of  soul-life  is  perhaps  the 
main  underlying  motive  of  the  best  part  of  Frey- 
tag's  work  ;  a  work,  let  us  add,  that  everywhere 
appeals  to  the  deepest  and  best  instincts  of  our 
nature. 


In  Memoriam  229 


JOHN  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS. 

THE  death  of  Mr.  Symonds,  at  Rome,  has  re- 
moved from  the  field  of  English  letters  one  of  its 
most  graceful  and  accomplished  representatives. 
He  had  only  reached  the  age  of  fifty-two  (Shakes- 
peare's age),  but  his  death  was  not  wholly  unex- 
pected. Many  years  ago  he  was  forced  to  leave 
England  by  pulmonary  disease  that  threatened 
his  life,  and  to  take  up  a  practically  permanent 
residence  at  Davos,  in  the  Engadine.  His  life 
in  this  mountain  home  has  been  described  by 
himself  in  a  number  of  charming  magazine  ar- 
ticles, and  by  his  daughter  in  a  recently  published 
volume.  He  occasionally  ventured  upon  short 
excursions  from  his  seat  of  exile  —  mostly  into 
Italy  for  the  collection  of  the  material  required 
by  his  literary  work  —  and  it  was  upon  one  of 
these  excursions  that  he  gave  up  the  long  struggle 
with  ill  health. 

His  enforced  residence  in  what  was,  for  the 
literary  worker,  an  almost  complete  solitude,  has 


230  Little  Leaders 

left  its  mark  upon  the  work  of  his  later  years. 
Absence  from  all  libraries  but  his  own  has  given 
to  much  of  that  work  an  inadequate  character, 
and  left  it  lacking  in  the  accuracy  demanded  by 
modern  scholarship.  For  these  defects,  con- 
sidering their  excuse,  he  has  been  subjected  to 
unfairly  harsh  criticism.  It  is  really  remarkable, 
under  the  conditions,  that  his  work  should  have 
as  high  a  scientific  character  as  that  with  which 
it  must  be  credited,  and  it  surely  offers  a  case  in 
which  the  verdict  of  justice  should  be  tempered 
by  that  of  mercy.  On  the  other  hand,  the  author's 
long  freedom  from  the  distractions  of  English  life 
enabled  him  to  become  a  prolific  worker,  and  the 
literary  activity  of  his  later  years  has  been  very 
marked.  He  has  produced  new  volumes  in  rapid 
succession,  and  most  of  them  have  been  volumes 
of  unquestionable  importance.  Much  of  his  later 
work  has  been  shaped  by  the  necessities  of  his 
isolated  situation,  and  has  taken  forms  that  did 
not  require  the  resources  of  great  collections  of 
material.  His  translations  from  the  Italian,  and 
his  subtle  analyses  of  the  principles  of  aesthetic 
criticism,  are  illustrations  of  this  general  state- 
ment, although  we  must  admit  that  the  most  im- 


In  Memoriam  231 

portant  of  his  later  works,  the  life  of  Michel- 
angelo, had  to  be,  and  was,  based  upon  an 
exhaustive  study  of  the  contemporary  documents. 
As  these  were  to  be  found  in  Italy,  a  country 
within  his  reach,  he  was  enabled,  even  in  his 
years  of  exile,  to  produce  one  work  of  capital 
scientific  value. 

Whatever  form  Mr.  Symonds  might  give  to 
his  work,  it  was,  like  that  of  the  great  French- 
man whose  loss  we  have  so  lately  mourned,  es- 
sentially critical  in  spirit,  and  its  author  will  be 
remembered  among  the  critics,  rather  than  among 
the  poets,  the  travellers,  or  the  narrative  histori- 
ans. But  his  critical  method  was  radically  unlike 
that  of  his  French  contemporary,  being  as  sub- 
jective as  that  of  Taine  was  objective.  He  con- 
stantly sought  to  place  himself  within  the  mind 
of  the  writer  or  historical  character  with  whom 
he  was  engaged,  to  see  the  world  with  his  eyes, 
and  to  treat  the  environment  as  secondary  in  time 
if  not  in  significance.  Taine,  as  we  all  know, 
deduced  the  man  and  his  work  from  the  sur- 
rounding conditions ;  Symonds  took  the  man  and 
his  work  as  the  data  of  the  problem,  seeking  to 
understand  rather  than  to  account  for  them.  We 


232  Little  Leaders 

are  not  here  concerned  to  compare  the  two  meth- 
ods of  work.  Both  of  them  are  capable  of  ex- 
cellent results,  and  either  of  them,  if  carried  far 
enough,  involves  the  other.  It  is  sufficient  to  say 
that  a  writer  committed  to  the  one  does  not,  as  a 
rule,  realize  all  the  possibilities  of  the  other,  and 
falls  short  of  that  synthesis  of  the  two  that  will 
produce  the  criticism  of  the  future. 

When  Schelling  spoke  of  architecture  as  frozen 
music,  he  sounded  the  keynote  of  what  we  may 
call  the  romantic  manner  in  criticism.  l  In  ro- 
mantic writing/  as  we  are  told  by  Professor  Sid- 
ney Colvin,  c  all  objects  are  exhibited  as  it  were 
through  a  colored  and  iridescent  atmosphere. 
Round  about  every  central  idea  the  romantic 
writer  summons  up  a  cloud  of  accessory  and  sub- 
ordinate ideas  for  the  sake  of  enhancing  its  effect, 
if  at  the  risk  of  confusing  its  outlines.'  To  Mr. 
Symonds  as  a  critic  this  definition  of  romanticism 
closely  applies.  A  student  of  all  the  arts,  a  lover 
of  natural  no  less  than  of  man-created  beauty,  he 
was  constantly  bringing  one  set  of  impressions  to 
the  aid  of  another.  He  delighted  in  illustrating 
poetry  by  the  phrases  of  landscape,  and  painting 


In  Memoriam  233 

by  the  language  of  music.  Those  who  will  have 
only  the  clean-cut  critical  phraseology  of  Sainte- 
Beuve  and  Arnold  resent  the  exuberance  of  Sy- 
monds,  and  do  imperfect  justice  to  its  beauty  as 
well  as  to  its  power  of  making  a  lasting  impression. 
If  they  admit  the  latter  quality,  they  will  say  that 
the  impression  is  false,  that  the  half-lights  of  ro- 
manticism are  misleading,  and  that  each  artistic 
or  other  embodiment  of  beauty  has  its  distinct 
province,  forgetting  that  all  forms  of  beauty  ap- 
peal to  the  same  emotional  consciousness,  and 
that  the  law  of  association  is  no  less  valid  in  the 
emotional  than  in  the  intellectual  sphere.  Pro- 
fessor Tyrrell,  in  a  satirical  sketch  of  the  modern 
methods  of  classical  study,  says  :  l  To  study  the 
works,  for  instance,  of  the  Greek  dramatists  is  no 
longer  a  road  to  success  as  a  scholar,  or  as  a  stu- 
dent. No :  you  must  be  ready  to  liken  ./Eschy- 
lus  to  an  Alpine  crevasse,  Sophocles  to  a  fair 
avenue  of  elms,  and  Euripides  to  an  amber  weep- 
ing Phaethontid,  or  a  town-pump  in  need  of  re- 
pairing.' This  is  clearly  a  reference  to  such  books 
as  Symonds's  '  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets,'  and 
yet  that  book  has  done  more  to  rouse  an  enthu- 


234  Little  Leaders 

siasm  for  Greek  poetry,  and  foster  a  desire  for  its 
acquaintance,  than  all  the  unromantic  tomes  of 
the  grammarians. 

One  subject  Mr.  Symonds  made  his  own,  and 
by  his  work  done  upon  that  subject  he  will  be 
chiefly  remembered.  The  Italian  Renaissance 
has  had  historians  of  more  minutely  accurate 
scholarship,  and  its  separate  phases  have  perhaps 
found  occasional  treatment  subtler  and  more  pro- 
found than  it  was  in  his  power  to  give  them.  But 
the  period  as  a  whole,  its  political  and  domestic 
life,  its  literature  and  art,  received  at  his  hands  a 
treatment  that  lacks  neither  grasp  nor  sympathy, 
that  is  distinctly  the  best  and  most  attractive  in 
English  literature.  This  treatment  is  chiefly  em- 
bodied in  the  series  of  seven  volumes,  beginning 
with  c  The  Age  of  the  Despots '  and  ending  with 
the  l  Catholic  Reaction,'  but  is  also  to  be  sought 
in  the  masterly  life  of  Michelangelo,  in  'An 
Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Dante,'  in  the  verse 
and  prose  translations  from  Italian  literature,  and 
in  the  host  of  studies  and  sketches  from  time  to 
time  contributed  to  the  periodicals.  Upon  the 
fascinating  period  with  which  all  this  work  deals 
the  best  part  of  the  author's  thought  was  centred, 


In  Memoriam  235 

and  modern  criticism  offers  few  instances  of  so 
close  an  adaptation  of  a  writer  to  his  theme. 
Both  by  temperament  and  by  training  he  was  the 
man  for  the  work,  and  the  way  in  which,  the 
main  body  of  the  work  accomplished,  he  has  lin- 
gered upon  the  outskirts  of  his  chosen  field  of 
study  reveals  the  extent  to  which  the  subject  took 
possession  of  his  mind  and  sympathies.  The  au- 
thor's studies  of  other  literatures  than  the  Italian 
are  chiefly  represented  by  his  work  on  the  Greek 
poets,  his  essay  on  Lucretius,  his  4  Sidney '  and 
1  Shelley'  in  the  l  English  Men  of  Letters'  series, 
his  l  Jonson  '  in  the  series  of c  English  Worthies/ 
and  his  thick  volume  entitled  l  Shakespeare's  Pre- 
decessors in  the  English  Drama,'  intended  to  be 
the  first  volume  of  a  complete  history  of  our 
great  dramatic  period.  His  volumes  of  travel  in 
Italy  and  Greece  are  genuine  literature,  exempli- 
fying the  wealth  of  his  learning,  the  justness  of 
his  perceptions,  and  the  beauty  of  his  style.  His 
original  verse,  considerable  in  amount,  falls  short 
of  being  great  poetry,  but  may  be  read  with  keen 
pleasure,  and  appeals  strongly  to  the  reflective 
mind.  His  essays  on  the  principles  of  aesthetics 
are  burdened  with  verbiage  and  not  always  lucid 


236  Little  Leaders 

in  enunciation,  but  they  are  weighty  enough  am- 
ply to  repay  their  readers.  When  we  consider 
his  work  as  a  whole  we  are  impressed  with  its 
range,  its  sanity,  and  its  devotion  to  the  Goethean 
ideal  of  the  good,  true,  and  beautiful.  His  death 
has  made  a  conspicuous  vacancy  in  the  rapidly 
thinning  ranks  of  our  older  writers,  and  upon  no 
other  shoulders  does  his  particular  mantle  seem 
yet  to  have  fallen. 


In  Memoriam  237 


CHRISTINA  GEORGINA  ROSSETTI. 

ONE  of  the  closing  days  of  1894  was  saddened 
by  the  death  of  Miss  Rossetti,  the  youngest  of 
that  famous  quartette  of  brothers  and  sisters  of 
whom  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti  is  now  left  the  sole 
survivor.  Maria  Francesca,  who  died  in  1876, 
was  the  oldest  of  the  four,  having  first  seen  the 
light  in  1827.  Then  came  Dante  Gabriel  in 
1828,  William  Michael  in  1829,  and  Christina 
Georgina  in  1830.  Miss  Rossetti  gave  early 
evidence  of  her  poetic  talents,  as  is  shown  by  the 
privately-printed  volume  of c  Verses  '  dated  1847. 
In  1850,  with  her  brothers,  she  wrote  for  the 
famous  4  Germ,'  over  the  pseudonymous  signa- 
ture of  l  Ellen  Alleyne.'  It  was  not,  however, 
until  1862  that  she  took  her  destined  place  among 
the  greater  Victorian  poets,  with  c  Goblin  Mar- 
ket and  Other  Poems.'  That  volume  was  fol- 
lowed, in  1 866,  by  4  The  Prince's  Progress  and 
Other  Poems,'  and,  in  1881,  by  c  A  Pageant  and 
Other  Poems.'  It  is  upon  the  contents  of  these 


238  Little  Leaders 

three  collections  that  Miss  Rossetti's  reputation 
must  rest,  although  she  did  a  considerable  amount 
of  other  literary  work.  Before  discussing  the 
character  of  her  poems,  we  may  dispose  of  the 
other  books  by  a  simple  enumeration.  '  Com- 
monplace and  Other  Short  Stories'  (1870)  and 
'Sing-Song:  A  Nursery  Rhyme-Book'  (1872) 
are  titles  that  speak  for  themselves.  l  Speaking 
Likenesses,'  a  volume  of 'quasi-allegorical  prose,' 
and  '  Annus  Domini :  A  Prayer  for  Every  Day 
in  the  Year/  both  bear  the  date  1874.  'Seek 
and  Find,' l  Called  to  the  Saints,'  and  '  Letter  and 
Spirit,'  three  religious  works  in  prose,  date  from 
1879, 1 88 1,  and  1883,  respectively;  while 'Time 
Flies,'  a  reading  diary  in  alternate  verse  and  prose, 
appeared  in  1885,  and  was,  we  believe,  her  last 
published  volume.  These  devotional  books, 
which  have  both  found  and  deserved  a  large  and 
appreciative  audience,  are  distinctly  out  of  the 
common,  but  the  spirit  which  finds  expression  in 
them  finds  utterance  still  more  intense  and  rap- 
turous in  the  three  volumes  of  song  to  which  we 
now  turn. 

It  is  not  the  least  of  the  glories  of  English  poe- 


In  Memoriam  239 

try  that  two  women  should  be  numbered  among 
the  singers  whom  we  most  love  and  honor.  It 
is  perhaps  idle  to  inquire  whether  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing or  Miss  Rossetti  is  to  be  esteemed  the  greater 
poet ;  the  one  thing  certain  is  that  no  other  En- 
glish woman  is  to  be  named  in  the  same  breath 
with  them.  These  two  stand  far  apart  from  the 
throng,  lifted  above  it  by  inspiration  and  achieve- 
ment, and  no  account  of  the  greater  poetry  of  our 
century  can  ignore  them.  If  there  is  something 
more  instinctive,  more  inevitable  in  impulse, 
about  the  work  of  Mrs.  Browning,  there  is  more 
of  restraint  and  of  artistic  finish  about  the  work 
of  Miss  Rossetti.  The  test  of  popularity  would 
assign  to  the  former  the  higher  rank,  just  as  it 
would  place  Byron  above  Keats  and  Coleridge, 
or  above  Wordsworth  and  Shelley ;  but  the  critic 
has  better  tests  than  the  noisy  verdicts  of  the 
multitude,  and  those  tests  lessen,  if  they  do  not 
quite  do  away  with,  the  seeming  disparity  between 
the  fame  of  the  two  women. 

The  longer  pieces  which  introduce  Miss  Ros- 
setti's  three  volumes  are  not  the  most  successful 
of  their  contents.  It  is  rather  to  the  lyrics,  bal- 


240  Little  Leaders 

lads,  and  sonnets  that  the  lover  of  poetry  will 
turn  to  find  her  at  her  best.  Who,  for  example, 
could  once  read  and  ever  forget  such  a  sonnet  as 
'Rest'? 

«  O  Earth,  lie  heavily  upon  her  eyes; 

Seal  her  sweet  eyes  weary  of  watching,  Earth; 
Lie  close  around  her;  leave  no  room  for  mirth 
With  its  harsh  laughter,  nor  for  sound  of  sighs. 
She  hath  no  questions,  she  hath  no  replies, 

Hushed  in  and  curtained  with  a  blessed  dearth 
Of  all  that  irked  her  from  the  hour  of  birth, 
With  stillness  that  is  almost  Paradise. 
Darkness  more  clear  than  noonday  holdeth  her, 

Silence  more  musical  than  any  song; 
Even  her  very  heart  hath  ceased  to  stir: 
Until  the  morning  of  Eternity 
Her  rest  shall  not  begin  nor  end,  but  be; 
And  when  she  wakes  she  will  not  think  it  long.1 

Or  who  could  escape  the  haunting  quality  of 
such  a  lyric  as  this : 

« When  I  am  dead,  my  dearest, 

Sing  no  sad  songs  for  me; 
Plant  thou  no  roses  at  my  head, 

Nor  shady  cypress-tree; 
Be  the  green  grass  above  me 

With  showers  and  dewdrops  wet; 
And  if  thou  wilt,  remember, 

And  if  thou  wilt,  forget. 


In  Memoriam  241 

'  I  shall  not  see  the  shadows, 

I  shall  not  feel  the  rain; 
I  shall  not  hear  the  nightingale 

Sing  on,  as  if  in  pain: 
And  dreaming  through  the  twilight 

That  doth  not  rise  nor  set, 
Haply  I  may  remember, 

And  haply  may  forget.' 

The  poem  just  quoted  can  hardly  fail  to  re- 
call, in  feeling,  thought,  and  measure,  Mr.  Swin- 
burne's c  Rococo,'  and  thus  emphasizes  the  spirit- 
ual relationship  of  the  author  to  the  poets  of  the 
group  sometimes  styled  l  Pre-Raphaelite.'  Sim- 
ilarly, the  perfect  lyric  called  *  Dream-Land '  is 
clearly  akin  to  4  The  Garden  of  Proserpine,'  and 
it  is  not  difficult  to  discern  the  same  sort  of  kin- 
ship between  Miss  Rossetti's  l  Up-Hill '  and  Mr. 
Swinburne's  c  The  Pilgrims.'  Now  the  point  to 
be  noted  is  that  all  three  of  Miss  Rossetti's  poems 
were  published  in  the  volume  of  1862,  while  the 
three  Swinburnian  poems  date  from  several  years 
later.  There  is,  of  course,  no  question  of  imita- 
tion— in  each  case  what  remains  a  simple  theme 
with  the  one  poet  is  elaborated  into  a  symphony 
by  the  other  —  but  it  is  difficult  to  escape  the 
conclusion  that  the  man  was  influenced  by  the 


242  Little  Leaders 

woman  in  all  three  of  the  cases.  Particularly 
with  i  Up-Hill '  and  *•  The  Pilgrims/  we  note  the 
common  use  of  the  dialogue  form  and  the  abso- 
lute identity  of  the  austere  ethical  motive. 

Miss  Rossetti's  verses  sometimes  suggest  those 
of  other  poets,  but  we  always  feel  that  her  art  is 
distinctly   her   own.     The   divine   simplicity  of 
Blake  is  echoed  in  such  a  stanza  as 
'  What  can  lambkins  do 

All  the  keen  night  through  ? 
Nestle  by  their  woolly  mother, 
The  careful  ewe.' 

The  melting,  almost  cloying,  sweetness  of  the 
Tennysonian  lyric  meets  us  in  these  verses : 
'  Come  to  me  in  the  silence  of  the  night; 

Come  in  the  speaking  silence  of  a  dream; 
Come  with  soft  rounded  cheeks  and  eyes  as  bright 
As  sunlight  on  a  stream; 

Come  back  in  tears, 
O  memory,  hope,  love  of  finished  years.' 

As  for  the  influence  of  the  great  Italian,  which 
shaped  so  powerfully  the  thought  of  every  mem- 
ber of  the  Rossetti  family,  it  is  less  tangible  here 
than  in  the  work  of  her  greater  brother,  yet  to  it 
must  be  attributed  much  of  the  tenderness  and 


In  Memoriam  243 

the  pervasive  mysticism  of  her  poems.  It  is  per- 
haps most  apparent  in  the  two  sonnet-sequences, 
4  Monna  Innominata '  and  l  Later  Life,'  both  in- 
cluded in  the  volume  ofi88i.  And  the  influence 
of  that  brother  who  bore  the  sacred  name  of  the 
Florentine  is  likewise  intangible  but  pervasive. 
We  get  a  glimpse  of  it  in  '  Amor  Mundi,'  for 
example,  and  in  many  a  vanitas  vanitatum  strain. 
But  we  must  repeat  that  Miss  Rossetti's  genius 
was  too  original  to  be  chargeable  with  anything 
more  than  that  assimilation  of  spiritual  influence 
from  which  no  poet  can  hope  wholly  to  escape, 
and  which  links  together  in  one  golden  chain  the 
poetic  tradition  of  the  ages. 

If  in  most  of  the  provinces  of  the  lyric  realm 
Miss  Rossetti's  verse  challenges  comparison  with 
that  of  our  greater  singers,  it  is  in  the  religious 
province  that  the  challenge  is  most  imperative 
and  her  mastery  most  manifest.  Not  in  Keble 
or  Newman,  not  in  Herbert  or  Vaughan,  do  we 
find  a  clearer  or  more  beautiful  expression  of  the 
religious  sentiment  than  is  dominant  in  Miss  Ros- 
setti's three  books.  In  this  respect,  at  least,  she 
is  unsurpassed,  and  perhaps  unequalled,  by  any  of 


244  Little  Leaders 

her  contemporaries.  In  her  devotional  pieces 
there  is  no  touch  of  affectation,  artificiality,  or 
insincerity.  Such  poems  as  c  The  Three  Ene- 
mies '  and  c  Advent '  in  the  first  volume,  c  Para- 
dise '  and  l  The  Lowest  Place '  in  the  second, 
and  many  of  the  glorious  lyrics  and  sonnets  of 
the  third,  will  long  be  treasured  among  the  re- 
ligious classics  of  the  English  language.  Perhaps 
the  poet's  highest  achievement  in  this  kind  is  the 
4  Old  and  New  Year  Ditties  '  of  the  first  volume. 
Some  such  claim,  at  least,  has  been  made  by  no 
less  an  authority  than  Mr.  Swinburne  for  the 
closing  section  of  the  poem. 

•  Passing  away,  saith  the  World,  passing  away; 

Chances,  beauty,  and  youth  sapped  day  by  day; 

Thy  life  never  continueth  in  one  stay. 

Is  the  eye  waxen  dim,  is  the  dark  hair  changing  to  gray 

That  hath  won  neither  laurel  nor  bay  ? 

I  shall  clothe  myself  in  Spring  and  bud  in  May: 

Thou,  root-stricken,  shalt  not  rebuild  thy  decay 

On  my  bosom  for  aye. 

Then  I  answered:  Yea. 

'  Passing  away,  saith  my  Soul,  passing  away; 
With  its  burden  of  fear  and  hope,  of  labor  and  play; 
Hearken  what  the  past  doth  witness  and  say: 
Rust  in  thy  gold,  a  moth  is  in  thine  array, 


In  Memoriam  245 

A  canker  is  in  thy  bud,  thy  leaf  must  decay. 

At  midnight,  at  cock-crow,  at  morning,  one  certain  day 

Lo,  the  Bridegroom  shall  come  and  shall  not  delay: 

Watch  thou  and  pray. 

Then  I  answered:  Yea. 

'  Passing  away,  saith  my  God,  passing  away : 

Winter  passeth  after  the  long  delay; 

New  grapes  on  the  vine,  new  figs  on  the  tender  spray, 

Turtle  calleth  turtle  in  Heaven's  May. 

Though  I  tarry,  wait  for  Me,  trust  Me,  watch  and  pray. 

Arise,  come  away,  night  is  past,  and  lo  it  is  day, 

My  love,  My  sister,  My  spouse,  thou  shalt  hear  Me  say. 

Then  I  answered:  Yea.* 

It  is  peculiarly  fitting  that  the  author  of  these  fer- 
vid and  solemn  verses,  written  for  one  New 
Year's  season,  should  herself  have  passed  away 
on  the  very  eve  of  another. 


246  Little  Leaders 


JOHN  TYNDALL. 

LOOKING  over  the  death-roll  of  1893,  we  are 
more  than  once  reminded  of  Lear's  terrible  fa- 
talism : 

'  As  flies  to  wanton  boys  are  we  to  the  gods, 
They  kill  us  for  their  sport.' 

Freeman,  hardly  beyond  his  prime,  found  his 
death  in  a  Spanish  inn,  the  victim  of  a  pox- 
infected  mattress.  Symonds,  with  many  fruitful 
years  seemingly  before  him,  was  taken  off  by  a 
cold  that  passed  into  pneumonia,  while  return- 
ing from  the  last  of  his  Italian  journeys.  To 
Tschaikowsky,  on  a  visit  to  St.  Petersburg,  death 
came  in  a  pestilential  draught  of  water,  and  chol- 
era marked  him  for  its  own  in  the  fulness  of  his 
powers.  Last  of  all,  and  most  ironical  in  its  ac- 
cent, came  word  that  John  Tyndall  was  dead, 
but  from  no  blow  dealt  by  the  legitimate  assail- 
ants of  mortality.  An  overdose  of  chloral,  given 
by  the  fatal  error  of  a  loving  wife,  cut  short  his 
career,  prematurely,  we  must  say,  although  the 


In  Memoriam  247 

best  of  his  work  was  doubtless  accomplished. 
Professor  Tyndall  occupied  a  large  place  in 
English  scientific  thought,  and  the  vacancy  caused 
by  his  death  will  not  easily  be  filled.  His  orig- 
inal researches  resulted  in  important  contributions 
to  knowledge,  especially  in  the  domain  of  molec- 
ular physics.  Although  they  do  not  place  him 
in  the  first  rank  of  nineteenth  century  English- 
men of  science,  they  secure  for  him  a  high  posi- 
tion in  the  second.  He  belongs  with  Professor 
Huxley  and  Lord  Kelvin,  rather  than  with  Dar- 
win and  Maxwell.  He  had  the  German  training, 
and  he  combined  the  German  thoroughness  with 
the  English  instinct  for  systematic  and  perspicu- 
ous presentation.  Great  as  was  his  service  in  the 
character  of  an  investigator,  he  did  a  still  greater 
service  to  his  countrymen  in  the  character  of  an 
expositor.  What  Professor  Huxley  did  for  the 
new  biology  created  by  Darwin,  was  done  by  Pro- 
fessor Tyndall  for  the  new  physics  created  by 
Joule  and  Faraday  and  Maxwell.  It  is  custom- 
ary in  certain  quarters  to  sneer  at  popular  science ; 
and  there  is  not  a  little  popular  science,  so-called, 
which  justifies  the  attitude  of  contempt.  But 
no  such  reproach  attaches  to  the  work  of  men 


248  Little  Leaders 

like  Tyndall,  whose  knowledge  of  the  subjects 
with  which  he  dealt  was  both  thorough  and  accu- 
rate. It  is  difficult  to  estimate  the  full  value 
of  the  work  done  for  the  advancement  of  English 
public  opinion  in  matters  of  science  by  the  group 
of  writers  to  which  Tyndall  belonged,  and  of 
which  his  death  left  Professor  Huxley  the  most 
distinguished  remaining  representative.  They 
came  at  just  the  right  time,  and  they  brought  just 
the  right  kind  of  powers  to  their  task.  Without 
the  labors  of  these  men,  the  great  nineteenth  cen- 
tury revolution  in  physical  and  biological  science 
would  indeed  have  been,  none  the  later,  a  fait 
accompli-,  but  it  would  have  taken  much  longer 
to  reach  the  popular  consciousness. 

Professor  Tyndall  stood  in  the  vanguard  of  the 
revolutionary  forces,  and  bore  the  brunt  of  the 
battle.  Twenty  years  ago,  he  incurred  the  odium 
tbeologicum  by  an  article  in  c  The  Contemporary 
Review,'  proposing  that  the  efficacy  of  prayer 
should  be  subjected  to  a  scientific  test.  He  little 
thought,  good  easy  man,  what  a  hornets'  nest  this 
cold-blooded  suggestion  would  bring  about  his 
ears.  When,  in  the  year  following  this  incident, 
he  was  presented  at  Oxford  for  the  honorary  doc- 


In  Memoriam  249 

torate,  he  found  his  candidacy  bitterly  opposed  by 
one  of  the  professors  of  divinity  in  the  University, 
on  the  ground  that  his  teachings  contravened  4  the 
whole  tenor  of  that  book,  which  with  its  open 
page  inscribed  Dominus  illuminatio  mea  the  Uni- 
versity still  bears  as  her  device.'  Only  a  year 
later  than  this,  his  address  before  the  Belfast 
meeting  of  the  British  Association,  in  which  ad- 
dress he  professed  to  discern  in  matter  4  the  prom- 
ise and  potency  of  every  form  and  quality  of  life,' 
again  aroused  his  theological  opponents,  and 
fanned  afresh  the  flame  of  their  zealous  indigna- 
tion. Only  three  or  four  years  before  these  oc- 
currences, Professor  Huxley,  in  a  lecture  upon 
Descartes,  speaking  of  the  religious  persecution 
of  which  that  philosopher  was  a  victim,  had  said : 
'There  are  one  or  two  living  men,  who,  a  couple 
of  centuries  hence,  will  be  remembered  as  Des- 
cartes is  now,  because  they  have  produced  great 
thoughts  which  will  live  and  grow  as  long  as  man- 
kind lasts.  If  the  twenty-first  century  studies 
their  history,  it  will  find  that  the  Christianity  of 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  recognized 
them  only  as  objects  of  vilification.'  The  vilifi- 
cation to  which  Tyndall  was  subjected,  in  conse- 


250  Little  Leaders 

quence  of  the  acts  above  alluded  to,  came  as  a 
prompt  and  striking  new  illustration  of  Professor 
Huxley's  remark. 

Most  earnest  men,  watching  the  world  from 
day  to  day,  get  impatient  because  it  moves  so 
slowly.  And  yet,  looking  back  over  a  few  years, 
the  same  men  will  find  cause  for  astonishment 
at  the  rapidity  of  its  advance  in  this  nineteenth 
century  of  ours.  The  Copernican  doctrine  re- 
quired from  one  to  two  centuries  to  make  its 
way ;  the  Darwinian  doctrine  accomplished  an 
equal  revolution  of  thought  in  one  or  two  de- 
cades. The  suggestions  that  seemed  so  startling 
when  made  by  Tyndall  twenty  years  ago  would 
to-day  hardly  cause  a  ripple  of  excitement  any- 
where. Few  intelligent  people,  whatever  their 
religious  beliefs,  are  now  shocked  at  the  admis- 
sion of  spontaneous  generation  as  a  necessary  link 
in  the  evolutionary  chain,  and  few  of  them  hold 
to  a  doctrine  of  prayer  that  invites  such  tests  as 
that  proposed  by  Tyndall  in  the  early  seventies. 
Of  recent  years,  Tyndall  has  been  assailed  by 
the  politicians  almost  as  vehemently  as  he  was 
once  assailed  by  the  theologians,  and  time  will 
bring  him  a  justification  similar  to  that  which  it 


In  Memoriam  251 

has  brought  him  in  the  earlier  controversy.  In 
his  denunciation  of  the  recent  Gladstonian  at- 
tempt to  dismember  the  United  Kingdom  he 
joined  himself  with  such  men  as  Tennyson  and 
Matthew  Arnold,  and  his  memory  need  fear  no 
defeat  in  that  alliance. 

The  noble  intellectual  temper  of  the  man  that 
has  just  died,  the  bent  of  mind  which  we  venture 
to  call  essentially  religious  in  spite  of  the  religious 
antagonisms  which  it  evoked,  and  the  eloquence 
of  expression  that  he  knew  how  to  impart  to  the 
subjects  which  so  deeply  concerned  him,  may 
most  fittingly  be  illustrated  by  the  closing  para- 
graph of  the  famous  Belfast  Address  : 

*  And  now  the  end  has  come.  With  more  time,  or 
greater  strength  and  knowledge,  what  has  been  here  said 
might  have  been  better  said,  while  worthy  matters  here 
omitted  might  have  received  fit  expression.  But  there 
would  have  been  no  material  deviation  from  the  views 
set  forth.  As  regards  myself,  they  are  not  the  growth 
of  a  day;  and  as  regards  you,  I  thought  you  ought  to 
know  the  environment  which,  with  or  without  your  con- 
sent, is  rapidly  surrounding  you,  and  in  relation  to  which 
some  adjustment  on  your  part  may  be  necessary.  A  hint 
of  Hamlet's,  however,  teaches  us  all  how  the  troubles  of 
common  life  may  be  ended;  and  it  is  perfectly  possible 
for  you  and  me  to  purchase  intellectual  peace  at  the  price 


252  Little  Leaders 

of  intellectual  death.  The  world  is  not  without  refuges 
of  this  description;  nor  is  it  wanting  in  persons  who  seek 
their  shelter  and  try  to  persuade  others  to  do  the  same. 
I  would  exhort  you  to  refuse  such  shelter,  and  to  scorn 
such  base  repose  —  to  accept,  if  the  choice  be  forced 
upon  you,  commotion  before  stagnation,  the  leap  of  the 
torrent  before  the  stillness  of  the  swamp.  In  the  one 
there  is  at  all  events  life,  and  therefore  hope;  in  the  other, 
none.  I  have  touched  on  debatable  questions,  and  led 
you  over  dangerous  ground  —  and  this  partly  with  the 
view  of  telling  you,  and  through  you  the  world,  that  as 
regards  these  questions  science  claims  unrestricted  right 
of  search.  It  is  not  to  the  point  to  say  that  the  views  of 
Lucretius  and  Bruno,  of  Darwin  and  Spencer,  may  be 
wrong.  Here  I  should  agree  with  you,  deeming  it  in- 
deed certain  that  these  views  will  undergo  modification. 
But  the  point  is,  that,  whether  right  or  wrong,  we  claim 
the  right  to  discuss  them.  The  ground  which  they  cover 
is  scientific  ground;  and  the  right  claimed  is  one  made 
good  through  tribulation  and  anguish,  inflicted  and  en- 
dured in  darker  times  than  ours,  but  resulting  in  the  im- 
mortal victories  which  science  has  won  for  the  human 
race.  I  would  set  forth  equally  the  inexorable  advance 
of  man' s  understanding  in  the  path  of  knowledge,  and 
the  unquenchable  claims  of  his  emotional  nature  which 
the  understanding  can  never  satisfy.  The  world  embraces 
not  only  a  Newton,  but  a  Shakespeare  —  not  only  a 
Boyle,  but  a  Raphael  —  not  only  a  Kant,  but  a  Beetho- 
ven —  not  only  a  Darwin,  but  a  Carlyle.  Not  in  each 


In  Memoriam  253 

of  these,  but  in  all,  is  human  nature  whole.  They  are 
not  opposed,  but  supplementary  —  not  mutually  exclu- 
sive, but  reconcilable.  And  if,  still  unsatisfied,  the  hu- 
man mind,  with  the  yearning  of  a  pilgrim  for  his  distant 
home,  will  turn  to  the  mystery  from  which  it  has  emerged, 
seeking  so  to  fashion  it  as  to  give  unity  to  thought  and 
faith,  so  long  as  this  is  done,  not  only  without  intolerance 
or  bigotry  of  any  kind,  but  with  the  enlightened  recogni- 
tion that  ultimate  fixity  of  conception  is  here  unattainable, 
and  that  each  succeeding  age  must  be  held  free  to  fashion 
the  mystery  in  accordance  with  its  own  needs  —  then,  in 
opposition  to  all  the  restrictions  of  materialism,  I  would 
affirm  this  to  be  a  field  for  the  noblest  exercise  of  what, 
in  contrast  with  the  knowing  faculties,  may  be  called  the 
creative  faculties  of  man.  Here,  however,  I  must  quit 
a  theme  too  great  for  me  to  handle,  but  which  will  be 
handled  by  the  loftiest  minds  ages  after  you  and  I,  like 
streaks  of  morning  cloud,  shall  have  melted  into  the  in- 
finite azure  of  the  past.' 

This  fine  peroration,  which  we  have  quoted  in 
its  entirety,  serves  better  than  a  volume  of  com- 
ment to  explain  the  influence  which  Tyndall  has 
exerted  upon  his  contemporaries,  and  especially 
upon  the  younger  generation.  The  scientist  of 
the  dryasdust  type  may  scoff  at  it  as  mere  rhetoric, 
but  it  has  stirred  many  of  its  readers  as  with  a 
trumpet-call  to  steadfastness  and  honesty  of  pur- 


254  Little  Leaders 

pose  in  the  pursuit  of  truth.  The  power  to  write 
in  this  fashion,  backed  by  the  power  to  employ 
the  most  rigorous  of  scientific  methods  in  his  own 
researches,  made  of  Tyndall  one  of  the  most  vital 
of  the  directive  intellectual  forces  of  his  age,  and 
brings  to  his  memory  a  host  of  mourners  who 
early  caught  the  contagion  of  his  spirit,  and  have 
sought  to  follow  in  his  footsteps. 


In  Memoriam  255 


THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY. 

THE  death  of  Professor  Huxley  came  not  with- 
out warning,  and  he  had  to  his  account  the  exact 
scriptural  tale  of  a  man's  years.  A  worker  and 
a  fighter  all  his  life,  the  pen  was  in  his  hand 
when  overtaken  by  the  illness  that  was  to  prove 
fatal  in  the  end,  and  he  was  replying,  with  una- 
bated vigor  of  expression  and  force  of  logic,  to 
the  latest  attack  made  by  mysticism  upon  that 
stronghold  of  reasoned  and  ordered  knowledge 
which  we  call  science,  and  of  which  he  had  for 
nearly  half  a  century  been  one  of  the  doughtiest 
of  defenders. 

In  the  popular  consciousness,  indeed,  Huxley 
ranked  among  the  leading  representatives  of  En- 
glish science,  probably  as  the  foremost  among 
them  after  the  death  of  his  old-time  colleague, 
John  Tyndall.  It  may  be  worth  while  to  con- 
sider for  a  moment  what  this  estimate  means. 
There  is  practically  no  such  thing,  in  the  present 
age  of  the  world,  as  the  representation  of  science 


256  Little  Leaders 

by  any  one  man.  Aristotle  was  perhaps  the  only 
man  for  whom,  in  any  age,  that  distinction  may 
be  claimed.  Nowadays,  a  man  can  represent 
science  only  by  representing  biology,  or  physics, 
or  geology,  or  something  even  narrower  than 
these.  Huxley  represented  English  science  in 
the  sense  that  he  gave  a  large  part  of  his  life  to 
the  subject  of  comparative  anatomy,  and  made 
some  fairly  important  contributions  to  our  knowl- 
edge of  that  subject.  But  his  work  was  not 
comparable  to  that,  in  their  respective  subjects, 
of  such  men  as  Faraday,  or  Lyell,  or  Maxwell, 
to  say  nothing  of  Darwin.  It  was  good  work, 
without  doubt,  but  it  was  equalled  by  a  score  of 
Englishmen  of  his  own  generation,  and  surpassed 
by  a  respectable  number. 

But  the  average  person,  when  he  thinks  of 
Huxley  as  a  scientific  leader,  recks  little  of  his 
comparative  anatomy,  and  has  probably  never 
heard  of  the  great  work  on  '  Oceanic  Hydrozoa,' 
the  manuals  of  vertebrate  and  invertebrate  anat- 
omy, or  even  the  monograph  on  c  The  Cray- 
Fish.'  It  is  a  very  different  sort  of  work  that 
has  given  Huxley  his  immense  reputation,  the 
work  which,  for  the  most  part,  may  be  found  in 


In  Memoriam  257 

the  nine  volumes  of  his  c  Collected  Essays,'  and 
which  is,  of  its  kind,  almost  unparallelled  in  our 
literature.  These  volumes,  it  is  true,  have  a 
great  deal  to  say  about  science  —  biological  sci- 
ence in  particular  —  but  they  announce  no  origi- 
nal investigations  worth  speaking  of,  and  they 
are  not  contributions  to  scientific  knowledge  in 
any  strict  sense.  Some  will  dismiss  them  with 
a  sneer,  as  mere  popularizations,  as  a  sort  of  jug- 
gling with  other  men's  ideas.  This  contemptu- 
ous procedure,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  gets  no 
sympathy  from  us,  and  it  is  as  distinctly  wrong- 
headed  as  the  attempt,  already  discussed,  to  clas- 
sify such  books  as  c  Man's  Place  in  Nature '  and 
1  The  Physical  Basis  of  Life '  among  important 
scientific  works. 

Wherein,  then,  lies  the  value  of  these  nine 
volumes  of  essays,  if  it  is  inadequate  to  consider 
them  as  mere  popularizations,  however  skilful, 
and  quite  wrong  to  call  them  contributions  to 
science  ?  We  should  say  that  the  first  and  most 
important  claim  to  be  made  for  them  is  that  they 
reveal  a  strong  philosophical  thinker;  that  be- 
neath their  graceful  rhetoric  and  acute  dialectic 
there  is  a  method  of  fundamental  importance, 


258  Little  Leaders 

clearly  conceived,  and  rigorously  applied  to  the 
special  subject,  whatever  it  may  be,  under  con- 
sideration. What  that  method  is  may  be  seen 
plainly  enough  in  any  one  among  half  a  dozen  of 
the  more  formal  discussions ;  most  plainly,  per- 
haps, in  the  noble  essay,  dated  1870,  upon  the 
4  Discours  de  la  Methode '  of  Descartes.  In- 
deed, the  author  recognized  the  principle  above 
stated  as  constituting  the  unifying  element  in  his 
seemingly  so  diversified  work  when  he  gave  to 
the  initial  volume  of  the  revised  edition  of  the 
4  Essays '  the  significant  title  4  Method  and  Re- 
sults.' And  this  title  might  have  been  made  to 
cover  the  whole  collection,  for  we  find,  whether 
the  subject  of  an  essay  be  4  Man's  Place  in  Na- 
ture '  or  l  Evolution  and  Ethics,'  the  story  of 
the  Gadarene  swine  or  the  organization  of  the 
State,  that  the  discussion  always  proceeds  upon 
well-defined  lines,  and  with  close  reference  to  a 
controlling  organon.  It  was  no  vagary,  as  some 
of  his  readers  thought,  when  he  turned  from  his 
anatomical  studies  to  write  for  the  4  English  Men 
of  Letters '  a  philosophical  analysis  of  the  work 
of  Hume ;  it  was  rather  an  indication  of  the  real 
bent  of  his  mind,  which  always  looked  beyond 


In  Memoriam  259 

the  half-unified  knowledge  of  science  to  the  fully- 
unified  knowledge  that  we  call  philosophy. 

The  healthy  English  mind  is  not  distinguished 
by  an  aptitude  for  metaphysics,  and  Huxley's 
mind  was  distinctly  of  the  healthy  English  type. 
He  was  content  with  a  method,  when  a  French- 
man or  a  German  would  have  been  satisfied  with 
nothing  short  of  a  system.  Hence,  he  was  willing 
to  leave  many  of  the  questions  of  philosophy  un- 
answered, content  to  carry  his  method  as  far  it 
would  go,  and  to  admit  ignorance  of  the  regions 
beyond.  He  even  coined  a  word  with  which  to 
name  this  philosophical  attitude,  and  the  imme- 
diate adoption  and  currency  of  that  word  showed 
that  it  met  a  long-felt  want.  Since  it  came  into 
our  circulation,  agnosticism,  like  many  other 
words,  has  been  used  as  a  counter  by  wise  men 
and  as  a  full-weight  coin  by  fools,  but  it  has  jus- 
tified itself,  on  the  whole,  as  a  useful  addition  to 
our  philosophical  terminology. 

The  lectures  and  writings  of  our  arch-agnostic 
have,  during  the  past  forty  years,  aroused  a  good 
many  religious  antagonisms ;  some  of  these  have 
become  allayed  by  time,  and  some  are  still  active. 
It  took  a  bold  Englishman  in  the  sixties  to  cham- 


260  Little  Leaders 

pion  the  Darwinian  doctrine  of  descent  and  to 
combat  the  grotesque  Miltonic  theory  of  crea- 
tion ;  but  Huxley  was  never  lacking  in  courage, 
and  he  bore  without  flinching  the  brunt  of  theo- 
logical attack  and  vilification.  The  world  —  that 
is,  all  the  world  worth  considering  —  came  round 
to  his  side  sooner  than  could  have  been  anticipated 
by  a  student  of  the  history  of  new  and  fruitful 
ideas — of  their  long  hard  struggle  with  ignorance, 
and  blindness,  and  all  the  banded  legions  of  the 
old  order  of  thought — and  the  last  score  of  years 
left  to  the  stout-hearted  philosopher  were  serene 
with  the  satisfaction  of  complete  achievement  in 
at  least  one  important  field  of  his  endeavor.  But 
the  theory  of  creation  was  not  the  only  strong- 
hold occupied  by  the  popular  theology  of  his 
fellow-countrymen,  and,  when  that  was  battered 
down,  there  were  others  to  be  attacked.  All 
these  assaults  were  not,  of  course,  directed  against 
religion  at  all,  any  more  than  were  the  Voltairean 
assaults  of  a  century  previous,  and  the  infame  that 
Huxley  sought  to  crush  in  the  world  of  thought 
was  as  little  deserving  of  consideration  as  was  the 
engine  of  political  and  social  despotism  which 
Voltaire's  memorable  and  magnificent  crusade  did 


In  Memoriam  261 

so  much  to  demolish.  We  should  say  that  Hux- 
ley, far  from  being  an  enemy  of  religion,  was  one 
of  the  best  friends  it  has  ever  found,  and  we 
have  no  doubt  that,  from  the  more  enlightened 
twentieth-century  religious  point  of  view,  he  will 
be  remembered  as  such. 

For  our  part  the  aspect  of  Huxley's  life  and 
work  that  compels  the  deepest  gratitude  is  the 
absolute  honesty  by  which  that  life  and  that  work 
were  characterized  throughout.  One  does  not 
need  to  accept  all  of  his  conclusions  to  admire 
the  intellectual  process  by  which  they  were 
reached.  His  logic  may  now  and  then  have  been 
at  fault,  but  it  scorned  every  species  of  sophis- 
tical subterfuge.  To  get  at  the  truth,  not  merely 
to  make  a  better-sounding  argument  than  his  op- 
ponent, was  always  his  aim.  He  hated  shams  as 
Carlyle  hated  them,  but,  instead  of  inveighing  at 
them  with  stormy  prophecy  (l  I  am  not  equal  to 
the  prophetical  business ' ),  he  employed  the  bet- 
ter weapon  of  compactly-wrought  argumentation. 
Very  recently,  taking  a  retrospective  view  of  his 
life,  he  made  this  statement  of  what  had  been  its 
aims  and  its  guiding  principles : 

'Men   are  said  to   be   partial  judges   of  themselves. 


262  Little  Leaders 

Young  men  may  be,  I  doubt  if  old  men  are.  Life  seems 
terribly  foreshortened  as  they  look  back,  and  the  moun- 
tain they  set  themselves  to  climb  in  youth  turns  out  to  be 
a  mere  spur  of  immeasurably  higher  ranges  when,  with 
failing  breath,  they  reach  the  top.  Bui  if  I  may  speak 
of  the  objects  I  have  had  more  or  less  definitely  in  view 
since  I  began  the  ascent  of  my  hillock,  they  are  briefly 
these:  To  promote  the  increase  of  natural  knowledge, 
and  to  forward  the  application  of  scientific  methods  of 
investigation  to  all  the  problems  of  life,  to  the  best  of  my 
ability,  in  the  conviction,  which  has  grown  with  my 
growth  and  strengthened  with  my  strength,  that  there  is 
no  alleviation  for  the  sufferings  of  mankind  except  verac- 
ity of  thought  and  action,  and  the  resolute  facing  of  the 
world  as  it  is,  when  the  garment  of  make-believe  by 
which  pious  hands  have  hidden  its  uglier  features  is 
stripped  off.  It  is  with  this  intent  that  I  have  subordi- 
nated any  reasonable,  or  unreasonable,  ambition  for  sci- 
entific fame  which  I  may  have  permitted  myself  to  enter- 
tain, to  other  ends;  to  the  popularization  of  science;  to 
the  development  and  organization  of  scientific  education; 
to  the  endless  series  of  battles  and  skirmishes  over  evolu- 
tion ;  and  to  untiring  opposition  to  that  ecclesiastical 
spirit,  that  clericalism,  which  in  England,  as  everywhere 
else,  and  to  whatever  denomination  it  may  belong,  is  the 
deadly  enemy  of  science.' 

It  is  a  noble  apologia  pro  vita  sua,  ana  the  world 
will  not  readily  forget  what  it  owes  to  this  man's 


In  Memoriam  263 

single-hearted  devotion  to  truth.  His  tombstone 
should  bear  the  inscription,  Veritatem  dilexi^  that 
Renan  asked  to  be  cut  upon  his  own,  and  the 
measure  of  his  delight  in  the  truth  should  be  the 
measure  of  posterity's  delight  in  cherishing  his 
memory. 


264  Little  Leaders 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

THE  last  of  the  famous  group  of  New  Englanders 
who  made  the  dream  of  American  literature  a 
fact,  the  last  man  of  letters  to  survive  from  that 
annus  mirabilis  which  also  gave  to  America  Lin- 
coln and  Poe,  to  England  Tennyson  and  Darwin, 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  has  stolen  peacefully  to 
his  rest,  and  we  have  indeed  broken  with  the  past. 
Few  lives  have  meant  so  much  to  Americans  as 
that  now  ended,  its  years  so  nearly  those  of  the 
century  which  it  adorned.  As  the  intellectual 
associates  of  the  gentle  Autocrat  went  to  their 
own  places  one  by  one,  the  affection  in  which 
they  were  held  seemed  to  be  transferred  to  the 
ever-lessening  group  of  those  who  yet  remained, 
until,  in  concentration  of  grateful  recollection,  it 
was  all  heaped  upon  one  beloved  head.  Now, 
there  remain  but  memories  to  which  we  may 
cling ;  the  last  leaf  has  fallen  from  c  the  old  for- 
saken bough,'  and  we  smile,  as  he  bade  us  do, 
but  through  our  tears. 


In  Memoriam  265 

The  love  which  Americans  have  felt,  and 
always  will  feel,  for  the  group  of  our  distinctively 
national  poets,  including  Bryant  and  Longfellow, 
Whittier  and  Lowell,  besides  the  one  whose  loss 
we  now  mourn,  has  had  few  parallels  in  other 
nations  for  either  depth  or  sincerity.  We  knew 
that  they  were  not  great  poets,  as  the  world 
measures  poetic  greatness ;  we  knew  that  their 
voices  were  not  of  those  that  for  all  ages  speak 
to  all  mankind  ;  but  they  have  had  for  us  so 
many  endearing  associations,  their  names  have 
been  so  indissolubly  linked  with  whatever  was 
best  and  noblest  in  our  history  and  our  aspira- 
tions, that  we  could  not  wholly  measure  them  by 
the  cold  standards  of  objective  criticism.  The 
indigenous  nature-lyrics  of  Bryant,  Longfellow's 
delicate  treatment  of  the  romantic  aspects  of 
American  history,  the  passion  that  fired  Whit- 
tier's  songs  of  freedom,  and  the  ethical  fervor 
and  downright  manliness  to  which  Lowell  gave 
such  varied  utterance, —  all  these  things  meant 
something  to  us,  something  very  precious,  very 
personal,  and  altogether  incommunicable  to  the 
alien.  So  we  did  not  mind  it  very  much  when 
the  amiable  foreign  critic  told  us  that  most  of  our 


266  Little  Leaders 

poets  were  either  mocking-birds  or  corn-crakes. 
We  knew  that  it  would  be  useless  to  explain  or 
to  remonstrate  ;  we  knew,  in  fact,  that  his  lan- 
guage and  his  tests  were  not  ours,  nor  ours  his. 
The  work  of  Holmes,  besides  having  qualities 
peculiarly  its  own,  shares  also  in  the  special  ap- 
peals indicated  above.  There  is  no  lack  of  lyrical 
or  romantic  effect,  of  patriotic  or  ethical  passion, 
in  the  long  series  of  volumes  that  began  with  the 
'Poems'  of  1836  and  ended  with  'Before  the 
Curfew '  in  1888.  And  how  much  there  is  that 
falls  without  the  categories  thus  summarily  desig- 
nated ! 

« What  shapes  and  fancies,  grave  or  gay, 

Before  us  at  his  bidding  come! 
The  Treadmill  tramp,  the  One-Horse  Shay, 
The  dumb  despair  of  Elsie's  doom! 

« The  tale  of  Avis  and  the  Maid, 

The  plea  for  lips  that  cannot  speak, 
The  holy  kiss  that  Iris  laid 

On  little  Boston's  pallid  cheek!' 

And  then  Holmes  was  so  much  more  than  a 
mere  singer.  The  very  fact  that  we  most  fre- 
quently call  him  the  Autocrat  rather  than  the 
poet  suggests  something  of  his  versatile  ability. 


In  Memoriam  267 

With  one  aspect  of  his  life-work  we  are  not 
here  concerned.  As  a  medical  practitioner,  as  a 
teacher  of  anatomy,  and  as  a  writer  in  the  special 
field  of  his  profession,  he  had  a  full  and  honorable 
career,  and  we  may  fancy  that  he  more  than  once 
said  to  the  physician  Holmes,  This  is  what  I 
really  am,  the  rest  is  trifling;  just  as  Lamb  said 
of  his  India  House  folios,  'These  are  my  real 
works.' 

But  we  may  put  all  this  aside,  and  the  man  of 
letters  remains,  not  sensibly  diminished  in  stature. 
For  to  his  credit  stand  many  entries.  There  are 
the  three  novels,  and  of  them  we  must  say  that 
they  have  few  equals  in  our  American  fiction. 
4  A  Mortal  Antipathy '  we  might  perhaps  spare, 
but  we  would  not  willingly  lose  c  Elsie  Venner,' 
even  if  science  frown  upon  its  thesis,  or  c  The 
Guardian  Angel,'  even  if  it  do  not  in  all  respects 
fulfil  the  requirements  of  the  fictive  art.  We 
should  say  that  no  reservations  need  be  made 
when  it  is  a  question  of  praising  the  four  volumes 
of  Table-Talk,  which  begin  with  the  breakfast- 
table  and  end  with  the  tea-cups.  And  besides 
these  gifts,  he  gave  us  the  sympathetic  and  beau- 
tiful memoirs  of  Motley  and  Emerson,  and  the 


268  Little  Leaders 

many  prose  miscellanies  that  are  only  less  charm- 
ing than  his  more  famous  works. 

As  a  poet  —  and  in  the  final  settlement  the 
poet  will  outweigh  the  writer  of  prose —  Holmes 
preserved  for  us  the  spirit  of  the  classical  age  at 
a  time  when  romanticism  was  in  full  cry.  But, 
as  Mr.  Stedman  happily  suggests,  his  work  was 
a  survival  rather  than  a  revival.  It  is  curious, 
indeed,  as  the  same  acute  critic  remarks,  to  note 
how  persistently  he  remained  an  artificer  upon 
the  old-fashioned  lines,  although  ever  alert  to 
seize  the  new  occasion  and  the  new  theme.  We 
have  had  no  other  so  expert  in  personal  and  oc- 
casional verse,  no  other  who  could  so  distil  the 
very  quintessence  of  Yankee  humor,  or  of  the 
other  and  finer  qualities  of  the  New  England  in- 
tellect, into  the  most  limpid  of  song.  And  when 
he  was  entirely  serious,  how  exquisite  was  his 
touch,  how  pure  his  pathos,  how  clear  his  ethical 
sense  !  Let  c  The  Voiceless,'  '  Under  the  Vio- 
lets,' and  c  The  Chambered  Nautilus '  bear  wit- 
ness. And,  since  no  one  knew  so  well  as  he 
the  word  most  fit  to  be  spoken  upon  any  sol- 
emn occasion,  let  us  write  in  his  own  words  his 
epitaph  : 


In  Memoriam  269 

«  Say  not  the  Poet  dies ! 

Though  in  the  dust  he  lies, 
He  cannot  forfeit  his  melodious  breath, 

Unsphered  by  envious  death! 
Life  drops  the  voiceless  myriads  from  its  roll} 
Their  fate  he  cannot  share, 
Who,  in  the  enchanted  air 

Sweet  with  the  lingering  strains  that  Echo  stole, 
Has  left  his  dearer  self,  the  music  of  his  soul ! 

'He  sleeps;  he  cannot  die! 

As  evening's  long-drawn  sigh, 
Lifting  the  rose-leaves  on  his  peaceful  mound, 

Spreads  all  their  sweets  around, 
So,  laden  with  his  song,  the  breezes  blow 
From  where  the  rustling  sedge 
Frets  our  rude  ocean's  edge 
To  the  smooth  sea  beyond  the  peaks  of  snow. 
His  soul  the  air  enshrines  and  leaves  but  dust  below!  * 


270  Little  Leaders 


WILLIAM  FREDERICK  POOLE. 

IN  the  death  of  Dr.  Poole  American  history  lost 
one  of  its  best  equipped  and  most  painstaking 
students,  the  profession  of  librarianship  one  of  its 
foremost  exponents,  and  l  The  Dial '  one  of  its 
stanchest  friends  and  most  valued  contributors. 
Although  he  had  made  his  home  for  some  years 
past  in  the  university  suburb  of  Evanston,  a  few 
miles  from  Chicago,  his  work  was  done  in  the 
latter  city,  which  for  twenty  years  reckoned  him 
among  its  most  distinguished  citizens.  The  num- 
ber of  persons  who,  in  this  great  community,  are 
identified  with  intellectual  rather  than  with  mate- 
rial interests  is  still  relatively  so  small  that  the 
disappearance  from  our  midst  of  so  commanding 
a  figure  as  that  of  Dr.  Poole  is  a  public  loss  more 
grievous  than  it  would  be  in  many  other  places. 
His  death  leaves  a  social  vacancy  not  easily  to  be 
filled,  even  from  the  public  point  of  view ;  from 
that  of  the  friends  who  have  loved  and  honored 


In  Memoriam  271 

him  for  so  many  years,  the  mere  suggestion  of 
its  ever  being  filled  is  a  mockery. 

William  Frederick  Poole  was  born  at  Salem, 
Massachusetts,  December  24,  1821,  thus  being 
at  the  time  of  his  death  seventy-two  years  of  age. 
The  annals  of  his  career  may  be  briefly  chron- 
icled. He  entered  Yale  College  in  1842,  and 
was  graduated  in  1849.  This  period  includes  an 
interregnum  of  three  years  spent  in  earning  the 
money  needed  to  complete  his  college  education. 
President  Timothy  Dwight,  of  Yale  University, 
was  one  of  his  classmates.  From  the  time  of 
graduation  from  college  to  the  close  of  his  career, 
the  story  of  his  life,  viewed  externally,  is  little 
more  than  a  statement  of  the  various  libraries 
that  he  was  called  upon  to  direct  or  to  organize. 
He  was  an  assistant  librarian  in  the  Boston 
Athenaeum  from  1850  to  1852;  Librarian  of 
the  Boston  Mercantile  Library  from  1852  to 
1856;  Librarian  of  the  Boston  Athenaeum  from 
1856  to  1869;  and  Librarian  of  the  Cincinnati 
Public  Library  from  1869  to  1874.  Called,  in 
1873,  to  the  work  of  organizing  the  Chicago 
Public  Library,  he  entered  upon  that  task  early 


272  Little  Leaders 

in  1874,  and  remained  at  the  head  of  the  Chi- 
cago institution  until  1887,  when  he  was  called 
upon  to  undertake  the  task  of  organizing  the 
reference  library  endowed  by  the  late  Walter  L. 
Newberry,  of  Chicago,  and  known  by  the  name 
of  its  generous  founder.  During  the  nearly  seven 
years  that  he  lived  to  act  as  the  director  of  that 
institution,  he  collected  for  its  uses  nearly  one 
hundred  thousand  volumes,  and  lived  to  superin- 
tend their  transfer  to  the  magnificent  new  build- 
ing which  is  to  be  the  permanent  home  of  the 
Library. 

Librarianship,  in  this  country,  has  during  the 
past  twenty  years  become  one  of  the  learned 
professions ;  that  it  has  become  so  is  due  in  very 
great  measure  to  the  efforts  of  Dr.  Poole.  To 
secure  for  his  fellow-workers  the  recognition  ac- 
corded to  the  clergyman,  the  lawyer,  and  the 
physician ;  to  substitute  the  trained  bibliographer 
for  the  mere  custodian  of  books ;  to  establish 
professional  schools  of  librarianship ;  to  make 
the  public  familiar  with  the  principles  of  rational 
library  architecture ;  to  facilitate  access  to  collec- 
tions of  books,  and  to  enlarge  their  usefulness  by 
library  helps  prepared  by  the  cooperation  of  bib- 


In  Memoriam  273 

liographers  —  these  were,  briefly  stated,  the  aims 
towards  whose  accomplishment  he  devoted,  for  a 
full  half-century,  an  exceptionally  active  and  in- 
dustrious life.  He  was  a  member  of  the  New 
York  Convention  of  Librarians  held  in  1853, 
the  first  convention  of  the  sort  ever  held  any- 
where. He  helped  organize  the  American  Library 
Association  in  1876,  was  one  of  the  Presidents 
of  that  body,  and  attended  all  but  one  of  its 
annual  meetings.  He  represented  this  country 
at  the  first  International  Conference  of  Libra- 
rians, held  in  London  in  1877, and  was,  in  1893, 
at  the  head  of  the  World's  Congress  Auxiliary 
Literary  Congresses,  one  of  which  was  an  Inter- 
national Congress  of  Librarians.  The  papers 
published  by  him  upon  professional  subjects  are 
very  numerous,  but  are  difficult  of  access.  These 
papers  ought  to  be  collected,  for  they  contain 
much  material  of  permanent  value. 

As  a  librarian,  Dr.  Poole's  methods  were 
characterized  by  sagacious  practicality  and  clear 
common  sense.  He  mistrusted  the  elaborate 
scientific  systems  now  in  vogue  with  our  younger 
bibliographers  —  systems  which  are  excellent  for 
the  uses  of  the  librarian,  but  sadly  perplexing  to 


274  Little  Leaders 

most  of  the  people  for  whom  libraries  are  col- 
lected. His  methods  of  classification  and  cata- 
logue-making were  to  a  certain  extent  empirical, 
and  not  a  little  is  to  be  said  on  behalf  of  empiri- 
cism in  such  matters.  He  never  lost  sight  of  the 
fundamental  principle  that  books  are  meant  to  be 
used ;  that  their  chief  end  is  not  attained  when 
they  are  catalogued  and  shelved.  He  wanted 
the  public  to  use  the  books  under  his  charge, 
and  encouraged  such  use  in  many  ways.  He 
welcomed  the  work  of  University  Extension,  and 
tried  to  make  the  public  library  a  helpful  adjunct 
to  that  work.  And  long  before  University  Ex- 
tension was  talked  about  in  this  country,  he 
sought  to  bring  the  school  into  more  intimate 
relations  with  the  library,  and  arranged  for  bib- 
liographical talks  to  students,  illustrated  by  the 
literature  of  the  subjects  talked  about. 

Such  a  collection  of  Dr.  Poole's  bibliograph- 
ical papers  as  we  have  suggested  would  be  a 
worthy  monument  to  his  memory.  But  a  still 
worthier  monument  already  exists  in  the  shape 
of  the  great  '  Index  to  Periodical  Literature.' 
The  author  began  this  important  work  as  a  stu- 
dent, when  he  was  acting  as  librarian  of  a  college 


In  Memoriam  275 

society.  Its  first  edition  was  printed  in  1848, 
making  an  octavo  of  154  pages.  In  1853  'll 
reappeared  in  an  octavo  of  more  than  three  times 
the  thickness  of  the  earlier  volume.  In  1882 
(the  author  having  meanwhile  secured  the  coop- 
eration of  a  number  of  his  fellow-librarians)  it 
made  its  third  and  final  appearance,  again  multi- 
plied threefold  as  to  the  number  of  pages,  and 
much  more  than  that  as  to  the  quantity  of  mat- 
ter. Two  supplements  have  since  been  pub- 
lished, with  the  cooperation  of  Mr.  W.  I.  Fletcher, 
bringing  it  down  to  1892. 

As  a  student  of  history,  Dr.  Poole  devoted 
himself  chiefly  to  subjects  connected  with  the 
early  settlement  of  this  country.  His  l  Anti- 
Slavery  Opinions  before  1800  '  is  a  valuable  con- 
tribution to  the  history  of  the  l  peculiar  institu- 
tion '  in  America.  His  paper  on  c  The  Popham 
Colony '  discussed  certain  conflicting  claims  be- 
tween Maine  and  Massachusetts  as  to  priority  of 
settlement,  deciding  in  favor  of  the  latter.  He 
investigated  the  history  of  the  Northwestern  Or- 
dinance and  the  connection  therewith  of  Man- 
asseh  Cutler,  making  himself  the  recognized  au- 
thority upon  that  important  subject.  He  pricked 


276  Little  Leaders 

the  bubbles  of  the  Pocahontas  story  and  of  the 
Mecklenburg  Declaration  so  effectively  that  they 
were  relegated  to  the  realm  of  myth,  and  are  not 
likely  again  to  find  serious  defenders.  He  pub- 
lished valuable  studies  in  the  history  of  the  early 
Northwest.  Most  important,  perhaps,  of  all  his 
studies  were  those  relating  to  early  Massachusetts 
history,  and  especially  to  the  Mathers  and  the 
subject  of  witchcraft.  These  subjects  were 
assigned  to  him  in  'The  Memorial  History  of 
Boston,'  and  were  frequently  discussed  by  him 
elsewhere.  He  did  much  to  correct  the  erroneous 
popular  estimate  of  Cotton  Mather,  showing  him 
to  have  been  learned,  sagacious,  and  tolerant, 
free  from  responsibility  for  the  witchcraft  delu- 
sion, and  a  commanding  figure  worthy  of  the 
respect  and  admiration  of  posterity.  In  this,  as 
in  other  instances,  Dr.  Poole,  himself  a  descend- 
ant of  the  Puritans,  stoutly  defended  his  ances- 
tors against  the  misrepresentations  under  which 
they  have  suffered.  Another  piece  of  historical 
work,  possibly  the  most  important  done  by  him, 
was  his  lengthy  historical  and  critical  introduc- 
tion to  the  reprint  of  Captain  Edward  Johnson's 
4  Wonder- Working  Providence  of  Sion's  Saviour 


In  Memoriam  277 

in  New  England.'  These  numerous  historical 
studies,  no  less  than  those  devoted  to  the  profes- 
sional work  of  the  librarian,  are  so  scattered  as  to 
be  difficult  of  access,  and  richly  deserve  collec- 
tion and  publication  in  permanent  form. 

Many  of  Dr.  Poole's  historical  papers  were 
contributed  to  the  journal  upon  which  now  de- 
volves the  sad  task  of  paying  a  tribute  to  his 
memory,  and  it  was  through  his  good  offices 
that  the  contents  of  *  The  Dial '  were,  from  the 
start,  included  in  the  great  '  Index.'  The  first 
number  of  4  The  Dial '  appeared  in  May,  1880, 
and  the  first  article  in  that  number  was  a  review, 
by  Dr.  Poole,  of  the  new  edition  of  Hildreth. 
His  latest  contribution,  which  was  probably  the 
last  piece  of  work  done  by  him,  was  a  vigorous 
defense  of  the  Puritans  of  which  our  readers  will 
hardly  need  to  be  reminded.  Between  these  two- 
contributions,  upwards  of  thirty  others  from  his. 
pen  appeared  in  the  pages  of  l  The  Dial ' ;  con- 
tributions devoted,  almost  without  exception,  to 
subjects  in  American  history.  Whatever  might 
be  his  subject,  the  forcible  and  picturesque  qual- 
ities of  his  style  could  not  fail  to  be  impressive, 
and  the  pages  that  he  wrote,  however  aggressive 


278  Little  Leaders 

and  tending  to  excite  opposition,  always  held  the 
attention,  and  were  never  invaded  by  anything 
remotely  suggestive  of  dulness. 

The  bibliographer  and  the  historical  student 
combined  in  William  Frederick  Poole  were 
known  to  the  world ;  something  better  than 
these,  the  man  himself,  was  known  to  his  friends. 
The  brusqueness  of  his  manner,  at  first  a  little 
repellant  to  those  who  came  into  contact  with 
him,  was  soon  seen  to  be  but  the  outward  ex- 
pression of  a  mental  habit  of  the  rarest  sincerity. 
And  upon  those  who  had  the  privilege  of  his  in- 
timacy was  made  the  impression,  dominant  above 
all  others,  of  his  absolute  integrity,  intellectual 
and  moral.  They  realized  that  here  was  a  man 
who  simply  could  not  think  one  thing  and  say 
another,  or  swerve  by  so  much  as  a  finger's 
breadth  from  what  he  believed  to  be  the  right 
course,  were  the  matter  in  question  great  or 
small.  Such  men  are  none  too  common  in  the 
world,  and  when  one  of  them  leaves  it,  his  place, 
for  those  who  have  really  known  him,  is  not 
likely  to  be  filled  again. 


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